narrowback

[ nar-oh-bak ]

noun

, Slang.

1. a person of slight build who is unfit for hard labor.
2. Disparaging. a contemptuous term used to refer to an Irish-American.

Word History and Origins

Origin of narrowback¹

1920–25

Example Sentences

Mr. Donleavy served in the Navy during World War II before moving to Dublin, where he studied zoology at Trinity College and frequently found himself in the middle of bar fights; his appearance as a bearded Yankee “narrowback,” he said, likely caused a few of the brawls, which included fights with Behan.

From Washington Post

Born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx to Irish immigrant parents, he is what the Irish author and playwright Brendan Behan called a “narrowback”—that is, a child of broad-backed toiling émigré Irish, whose American-born progeny had an easier life and a more svelte physique.

From The New Yorker

“They had in Ireland in those days a term to describe people like me, narrowback.”

From New York Times

Like a true narrowback, McNulty in his heart hungered for the lost village�and he found it in Third Avenue's vestiges of Irish life, in the awful cooking, the hatred of machinery, the acid yet basically gentle manner of one man to another.

From Time Magazine Archive