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Glite Dictionary
🍹 An evening drink 🧑‍🌾 A wandering worker
sundowner

sundowner

1 9.9
A person who arrives at farms at sunset asking for food or shelter
  • noun
  • Offensive
: vagabundo (despectivo, histórico, Australia)
  • During the Depression, many sundowners traveled from station to station in search of work and a meal.

Examples

  • The old farmer complained about the sundowner who showed up every week asking for supper.

  • She remembers her grandfather telling stories about sundowners arriving just as the sun was setting.

  • The sundowner arrived just as the sun set.

  • Many sundowners would stop by for a meal.

  • During the difficult times of the Depression, many sundowners would wander from farm to farm, looking for food and shelter as the day ended.

  • My grandmother often spoke of sundowners who would arrive at their homestead at dusk, hoping for a warm meal.

  • The farmer was used to seeing a sundowner knock on his door every evening, seeking a place to stay for the night.

Surface Forms

sundowner singular
sundowners plural

Morphology

sundowner = sundown (transparent) = down + sun + er

This sense is a straightforward agentive noun from 'sundown' + '-er', meaning a person associated with arriving at sunset.

Etymology

Sundowner was used in Australia for a traveller who arrived at sundown asking for food and a bed but offering little work. Because people came at sunset to avoid being put to work, the word came to mean someone who looks for help by showing up at sunset.