TheLiverpool Echo suggests two possible origins for the term, both dating back to the early 1900s:
- It may be a term for scab workers brought into the city from surrounding towns to manually load and unload ships in the Liverpool docks; unloading ships, the dockers would carry the woollen bales on their backs, leaving wool on their clothes.[1]
- It may be a term for men who delivered coal into Liverpool from mines surrounding the city, who wore sheep fleece to protect their backs.[1]
Another suggestion is that it could have originated in the Middle Ages from non-resident Welsh and English people trying to avoid the entry fee at the Chester city walls on market day by sneaking in the livestock entrance with a sheep on their back.
woollyback (pluralwoolly backs)
- (Liverpool slang, now historical) A non-Liverpudlian person who travels toLiverpool, especially to work at thedocks.
- (Liverpool slang, derogatory) A person from the Merseyside area surrounding Liverpool such asSkelmersdale,St. Helens,Southport,Halton, and theWirral.
- (British, slang) Any unsophisticated person from the countryside.
- (US, slang) A Welsh person.
- (US, slang) A New Zealander.
slang: unsophisticated person from the countryside
- Fred Fazakerley,Scouse English (2001), pages 24 and 29
- Eric Partridge (2005) “woolly back”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors,The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume2 (J–Z), London, New York, N.Y.:Routledge,→ISBN,page2121.
