WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY

Subject: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 11:29 AM

What is a "rounder"? Like in the Trad song Delia "She loved all them Rounders , never did love me" . I've always kinda vaguely understood the conotation as the guys who used to work loading the Steam Boats or Crapshooters and Gamblers. Is there a Traditional terminology dictionary ?

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 11:34 AM

Per Random House:

1. A wastrel or drunkard

2. (Brit.) A Methodist minister who travels a circuit among congregations

I know which one I'm voting for in your excerpt!

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Max
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 11:36 AM

Gambler. In Delia, they were definitely talking about gamblers.

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 12:09 PM

Guys who hung out near railroad roundhouses---wanting to catch a freight out.

Art

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 12:11 PM

A 'Rounder' is a home run in a cut down girls' version of baseball

Nigel

(it is of course the version that is cut down, not the girls!)

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 12:14 PM

In appalachia, a rounder was/is any male that your mother does not want you to associate with, for whatever reasons.

Perhaps because he is a musician and/or consumes alcoholic beverages and/or indulges in frivolous activiies such as dancing and/or gambles and/or gets into fights and/or is not saved etc.

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 01:31 PM

In Delia, a transient railway worker. See OED. ("Come all you rounders, for I want you to hear..." Casey Jones, a 1908 version in the Railroad Man's Magazine).
Now, in the USA and Canada, mostly has the sense of an habitual carouser.

Of course several other meanings, as shown above, depending on context.
In the 1850s, a gladhander ('glover').

(In the 1600s, another name for Puritan (roundhead).

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Mark Ross
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 01:34 PM

Rounder comes from the railroad, the guys who worked in the roundhouse where they worked on the engines. They had the reputation of being indolent, insolent, and generally up to no good.

As they used to say, "RUN INTO THE ROUNDHOUSE, NELLIE, HE CAN'T CORNER YOU THERE!

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 02:10 PM

Don Lange's song Here's to You Rounders in the DT combines a couple of usages.

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Cluin
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 02:21 PM

...By the telling of this story, I aim to let you know
There never was a rounder, who could lie like Diamond Joe

Just by the way I'd heard it used in context, I always thought it meant a sort of sharp character, a dishonest sort like a grifter or con-man. Thanks for the specifics, folks. And a good question, GUEST².

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 03:02 PM

My best guess: a rounder was originally an itinerant worker—a person who "makes the rounds," traveling from place to place in search of temporary employment. Such people, not being settled, would often be thought to be untrustworthy, therefore the meaning shifted to "a dissolute person; usually a man who is morally unrestrained [syn: libertine, debauchee]."

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 03:06 PM

There is no evidence that 'rounder' as applied to railway workers originated as a name for workers specifically in the roundhouse. It was applied to workers that were moved, or moved, from job to job (making the rounds, as we say today).

Cluin, that is another shade of the meanings that have come about since the term originated.
Actors had another definition; in the sense of a traveling performer.

(Roundhouse is a very old name for circular structures, Its application to a circular shed with a turntable is American. That the railroad term was in existence very early (ca. 1850) is evident from a proposal for a cheaper alternative, without cover, which was made in 1856).

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Alonzo M. Zilch (inactive)
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 06:28 PM

Always a stampfel, sometimes a weber.

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: GUEST,Jack Hickman
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 08:51 PM

In Canadian Police Jargon, a "rounder" was anyone operating on the wrong side of the law.

Jack Hickman

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 09:33 PM

I dunno, Q. My grandparents, who'd be about 120 if they were still alive, used "rounder" solely to mean a guy with disreputable social habits like drinking, gambling, and especially hanging around with "fast wimmin". They didn't know why it was "rounder" any more than they could explain the more thuggish "loafer." It was just one of those things.

The connection with "roundhouse" comes, I think, from the opening of the Newton & Siebert version of "Casey Jones": "Come all you rounders." Supposedly Casey's widow was very concerned that the song would tarnish his memory by hinting that he was a "rounder" too. (Not to mention the part where she tells her kids they've "got another poppa on the Salt Lake Line"!)

Subject: RE: WHAT IS A 'ROUNDER' SPECIFICALLY
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 11:12 PM

Looking through some old railroad journals that I have, but so far, only an article on lumberman's lingo.
Did find some interesting stuff, for example in 1878 engineers were classed for four years, receiving $2.36 for a hundred miles the first year and $3.93 for a hundred miles the fourth year. In 1921, a pair of high top leather work shoes with double leather soles was $1.98 with free delivery by mail from the Chicago factory.

In "The Locomotive Engineers Journal" was a full page adv. for the Burleson Sanitarium, "The largest institution in the world for the treatment of piles, fistula and all other diseases of the rectum." The picture shows a huge 8-story building. All that sitting in the cab....