wharf rat

1. 1.

   someone who lives near wharves and lives by pilfering from ships or warehouses

   Broadersneak thief
2. 2.

   brown rat that infests wharves

   Broaderbrown rat

Questions about wharf rat

What does wharf rat mean?

wharf rat means "someone who lives near wharves and lives by pilfering from ships or warehouses". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is wharf rat a common word?

wharf rat is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.