deckhand

plural deckhands

1. nauticalA member of the crew of a merchant ship who performs manual labour.

   But I wasn't good medicine for myself after I left them, he admitted, remembering the dreary years of failure at farming and trading, as blacksmith and deck hand and bullwhacker.

   1952, Dorothy M. Johnson, The Unbeliever; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 33

2. entertainmentA stagehand.

   Sometimes actors set props on the spikes, or sometimes a deckhand will do it, depending on the action of the play.

   2020, John Ramsey Holloway, Zachary Stribling, Illustrated Theatre Production Guide, page 15

present singular third person deckhands · participle present deckhanding · participle past deckhanded · past deckhanded

1. intransitiveTo work on a boat as a deckhand; crew.

   Larry ran a tugboat company from there, and sometimes my brother and I deckhanded for him.

   2017, Claire Dederer, Love and Trouble: Memoirs of a Former Wild Girl, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   You deckhand for Old Sam in the summer, you guide climbers up the Big Bump in the spring, you can skin a Cat, mine for gold, butcher a moose, fix an engine.

   1999, Dana Stabenow, Hunter's Moon, →ISBN

   I deckhanded on a fish boat for four years and knew no fisherman likes to be called out of the blue and have his numbers demanded!

   2004, Stephen Hume, A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming, →ISBN, page 210

   Years later, I met a guy who had deckhanded on her after I did, and he was a little more equivocal.

   2011, Bruce Burrows, The River Killers, →ISBN, page 16