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Wiktionary
sandhog

alt. (context slang English) a person employed to dig tunnels. n. (context slang English) a person employed to dig tunnels.

Wikipedia
Sandhog

Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners, construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City. Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of equipment from tunnel boring machines to explosives to remove material for the project they are building. The term is an American colloquialism.

Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the New York City infrastructure including the subway tunnels and sewers, Water Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel No. 3, the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels. In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Many of these workers are Irish or Irish American and West Indian.

Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon to find multi-generations of families to work together on the same job.

Usage examples of "sandhog".

Irma or the whiskey, but he felt as happy as an Altairean sandhog in rut.

And with one well-placed bomb, the top British sandhog and his superior were eliminated from the region.

The life of a sandhog tunneling under a river can be fascinating until you have to listen to a play-by-play of every shovel load of muck.

The tunnels from Manhattan Island each had a sandhog casualty rate comparable with combat, in a holy war .

He thought of sandhogs, alive and dead, on his way home, men whose lives and jobs orbited the three spheres of blood, sand, and oil.

They were fine for sandhogs, army sergeants, jungle explorers and the like.

When the sandhogs were digging the subways years ago the soupy ground around Canal Street would flood the shaft.

There were sandhogs and riggers and welders and shipfitters and two circus acrobats.

I can show you figures that prove it's safer to be a sandhog in the Moon than it is to be a file clerk in Des Moines-all things considered.

It was only copper, but to the sandhogs their "find" blinded them with the irresistible glitter of pure gold.

There were sandhogs and riggers and welders and ship fitters and two circus acrobats.