Dictionary

sharpie en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio
• /ˈʃɑːpi/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˈʃɑɹpi/ (General-American)

Etymology

From sharp + -ie (“diminutive suffix”).

Meanings

1. (colloquial) An alert person.
   • You have to beat a lot of real sharpies, guys who have been playing for years. 2012, Richard W. Munchkin, Gambling Wizards, page 109:
   • Eunice Marshall asked in a bored tone, "Are you, by any chance, selling magazines?" Daisy grinned childishly, enjoying Eunice's mistake. "You're quite a sharpie, aren't you, ma'am? You figured me out a whole lot faster than most people do." 1988, D. Miller Morgan, A Lovely Night to Kill, page 64:
2. (US, regional) A knowledgeable fisherman.
   • 1976 December, Ken Schultz, Field & Stream Fishing Contest Winners: Nothing but the Best, Field & Stream, page 78, Eventually DeBlasio became a sharpie. In New York and New Jersey coastal fishing parlance a “sharpie” is one who fishes seven days a week all summer long, selling his fish to the market to make a living. Sharpies supposedly have fishing down to a science, to such a degree that they only go to particular places, at particular times, using particular fishing methods, and come back with a boatload of fish while everyone else wonders in amazement.
3. (US) A swindler.
   • Three booths down a couple of sharpies were selling each other pieces of Twentieth Century Fox, using double arm gestures instead of money. 1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 102:
4. (US) A long, narrow fishing boat used in shallow waters.
   • On the other end of the spectrum are the flat-bottomed sharpies. The earliest sharpies were developed in the mid-nineteenth century as the ideal boats for the oyster fishery of the Connecticut shore. 2006, Greg Rössel, The Boatbuilder's Apprentice, page 293:
   • He brought this pair of sharpies, the Lucia and the Ella, to Beaufort by schooner and began to use them for fishing, oyster dredging, and even as a passenger ferry and party boat. The sharpie is a flat-bottomed, shallow-draft vessel of moderate size, comparable to a sloop or schooner. 1995, Rodney Barfield, Seasoned by Salt: A Historical Album of the Outer Banks, page 168:
5. (US, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping) Clipping of sharp-shinned hawk.
   alt of sharp-shinned hawk
   • My mother had lost a considerable number of spring chicks to a raiding sharpie. 2010, Era S. VanDenburg, The Natural World of Ivy Lane, page 48:
   • It is harder to gauge the shorter tail of sharpies, but on sitting birds the tail shape is a more useful character than it is on flying birds. Sharpies of all ages and sexes almost always show a notched tail when they are sitting. 2005, Bill Thompson, Eirik A. T. Blom, Jeffrey A. Gordon, Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges, page 93:
6. (Australia, New-Zealand, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping) Clipping of sharp-tailed sandpiper.
   alt of sharp-tailed sandpiper
   • I went back into my photos, and yes, on 13 Nov, I photographed both Sharpie and the Pec. 2019 November 21, Stan Jarzynski, “Possible Pectoral Sandpiper”, in canberrabirds mailing list:
   • The bird looked of a similar character to a knot/pec sandpiper/sharpie, but the exact size was difficult to judge[.] 2009 August 26, Rewi, “Help me Identify a Wader please”, in Birding NZ, archived from the original on 01 Jan 2025:
7. (Australia) A member of a violent, fashionably dressed youth gang of the 1960s and 1970s.
   • The Circle Ballroom in High Street Preston was another popular sharpie hang-out.[…]Sharpies were all deep drinkers. 2006, Iain McIntyre, Tomorrow Is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era, 1966-1970, page 47:
8. A Sharpie or other brand of felt-tipped marker pen.

Forms

Synonyms

sharp