sharpie

See also: Sharpie

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English sharp

Proto-Germanic *-j-, *-ij-

Proto-West Germanic *-i, *-ī

Old English -iġ

Middle English -y

English -y

English -ie

English sharpie

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

Pronunciation

(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɑɹpi/
(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃɑːpi/
Audio (Australia): (file)
Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)pi
Homophone: Sharpie

Noun

sharpie (plural sharpies)

(colloquial) An alert person.
- 1988, D. Miller Morgan, A Lovely Night to Kill, page 64:
  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."
- 2012, Richard W. Munchkin, Gambling Wizards, page 109:
  You have to beat a lot of real sharpies, guys who have been playing for years.
(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.
(US) A swindler.
- 1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 102:
  Three booths down a couple of sharpies were selling each other pieces of Twentieth Century Fox, using double arm gestures instead of money.
(US) A long, narrow fishing boat used in shallow waters.
- 1995, Rodney Barfield, Seasoned by Salt: A Historical Album of the Outer Banks, page 168:
  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.
- 2006, Greg Rössel, The Boatbuilder's Apprentice, page 293:
  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.
(birdwatching, US) Clipping of sharp-shinned hawk.
- 2005, Bill Thompson, Eirik A. T. Blom, Jeffrey A. Gordon, Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges, page 93:
  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.
- 2010, Era S. VanDenburg, The Natural World of Ivy Lane, page 48:
  My mother had lost a considerable number of spring chicks to a raiding sharpie.
(birdwatching, Australia, New Zealand) Clipping of sharp-tailed sandpiper.
- 2009 August 26, Rewi, “Help me Identify a Wader please”, in Birding NZ‎^[1], archived from the original on 1 January 2025:
  The bird looked of a similar character to a knot/pec sandpiper/sharpie, but the exact size was difficult to judge[.]
- 2019 November 21, Stan Jarzynski, “Possible Pectoral Sandpiper”, in canberrabirds mailing list‎^[2]:
  I went back into my photos, and yes, on 13 Nov, I photographed both Sharpie and the Pec.
(Australia) A member of a violent, fashionably dressed youth gang of the 1960s and 1970s.
Synonym: sharp
- 2006, Iain McIntyre, Tomorrow Is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era, 1966-1970, page 47:
  The Circle Ballroom in High Street Preston was another popular sharpie hang-out. […] Sharpies were all deep drinkers.
A Sharpie or other brand of felt-tipped marker pen.

Translations

felt-tipped marker pen — see felt-tip pen

Anagrams

Shar Pei, harpies, sephira, shar-pei, spheria