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A navvy is a worker who does hard work with the body — digging, building roads, laying railway lines. The word is British, and it sounds old. You will meet it in history books more than on the street. In the 1800s, Britain dug canals and then railways, and thousands of men did that work by hand. Though actually, the name comes from a surprise: those first men were called navigators, because they were building “navigations” — canals for boats. People cut the word down and added a small -y, and navvy stuck. It is not a soft or polite job title. Do not mix it up with navy, the country’s sea force; they look alike on the page, but a navvy worked on land, with a shovel.
粗工、挖土工人（英式；多指以前挖運河、修鐵路的體力工）
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
navvynoun/ˈnævi/
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historicalA laborer on a civil engineering project such as a canal or railroad.
- Suppose two lads, fresh from school, go out into the world to earn their living; one becomes a navvy and one a clerk. In five years' time these two young men will probably be very different in appearance from one another. The navvy will have developed his muscles; he will be broad-built, broad-chested, and strong.
- His proper trade's a navvy; and he works at it sometimes too—for exercise—and earns good money at it.
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an unskilled laborer
navvyverb/ˈnævi/
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historicalTo carry out physical labor on a civil engineering project.
- But by pretending to believe he's navvied before, I've given him double reason to drive himself hard.
- Before my time of navvying I believe the times were still worse.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。