casual

UK /ˈkaʒ(uː)əl/ US /ˈkæʒ(u)əl/
adj 5noun 5

Definitions

adj

1

Happening by chance.

They only had casual meetings.

casual breaks, in the general system

2

Coming without regularity; occasional or incidental.

The purchase of donuts was just a casual expense.

a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture

3

Employed irregularly.

He was just a casual worker.

This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything. In a moment she had dropped to the level of a casual labourer.

4

Careless.

I removed my jacket and threw it casually over the back of the settee.

5

Happening or coming to pass without design.

It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.

Hogan assumed the entire creek bed was to be played as a casual hazard, moved his ball out and assessed himself a one-stroke penalty.

noun

1

A worker who is only working for a company occasionally, not as its permanent employee.

2

A worker who is doing a particular type of job temporarily, not as a lifetime career.

Of the scavagers proper there are, as in all classes of unskilled labour, that is to say, of labour which requires no previous apprenticeship, and to which any one can “turn his hand” on an emergency, two distinct orders of workmen, “the regulars and casuals” to adopt the trade terms; that is to say, the labourers consist of those who have been many years at the trade, constantly employed at it, and those who have but recently taken to it as a means of obtaining a subsistence after their ordinary resources have failed.

3

A soldier temporarily at a place of duty, usually en route to another place of duty.

4

A member of a group of football hooligans who wear expensive designer clothing to avoid police attention; see casual (subculture).

At 15, he became a casual: one of the label-wearing, wedge-flicking, swaggering hooligan peacock boys who dominated the north-west when I was growing up. Casuals were working-class lads (called Perry boys in Manchester) who loved football, fighting and brilliant sportswear.

5

One who receives relief for a night in a parish to which he or she does not belong; a vagrant in the casual ward.

During the great prevalence of vagrancy, the cost of the sick was far greater than the expense of relief. In the quarter ending June 1848, no less than 322 casuals were under medical treatment, either in the workhouse of the Wandsworth and Clapham union or at the London Fever Hospital.

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