Daily AncestorNavvy
A navvy was a laborer who dug and built canals, railroads and other big earthworks; the word is short for navigator.
The term was coined in Britain in the late 1700s, when many canals, also called navigations, were being dug, and the diggers were called navigators. From the 1830s the same men and the same word moved to railroad building.
By 1818 high wages had drawn many Irish workers to North America, where they became a large part of the workforce building the Erie Canal in New York State. Wiktionary also gives the general sense of any unskilled laborer.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Michl. Tiernan, 30, Navvy, Ireland
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Navvy." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/navvy. Last checked 2026-10-12.