noun
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sport the last person in a team to compete, esp in a relay race
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Also called: anchor. presenter. (in broadcasting) a person in a central studio who links up and maintains contact with various outside camera units, reporters, etc
Gender
Is anchorman gender-neutral? See -man.
Etymology
Origin of anchorman
First recorded in 1910–15 anchorman for def. 1; 1955–60 anchorman for def. 2; anchor + -man
Explanation
An anchorman is a television news reporter. An anchorman typically reports from a news studio, reading the news from behind a desk. You can use the words anchorman and anchorwoman to talk about studio-based TV newscasters, but it's becoming more common to use one word to refer to either a man or a woman. News anchor or just anchor are increasingly common names for an anchorman. In the early 20th century, an anchorman was "the last man on a tug-of-war team," but by 1958 the word described a news presenter on TV or radio.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Back to the Nou Camp and it was the anchorman Sergio Busquets who popped up with a tap-in to level the aggregate scores.
From BBC • May 6, 2025
A brash young anchorman for the ABC affiliate, Michael Tuck, took on the newspaper in an editorial segment.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 20, 2024
Like many of today's pundits – though without their ideological commitments – he was an anchorman more invested in fame than in good journalism.
From Salon • Jan. 23, 2023
He did away with the staid, usually white anchorman delivering the news and switched to two anchors, often a man and a woman.
From New York Times • Oct. 7, 2022
The sports anchorman went through the professional baseball and football stuff, then the college football scores, and then the high school scores.
From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
