bagman
Americannoun
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bagmen
plural
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dishonest official; a person who collects, carries, or distributes illegal payoff money.
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British. a traveling salesman; drummer.
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Australian. a tramp; swagman.
noun
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informal a travelling salesman
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slang a person who collects or distributes money for racketeers
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informal a person who solicits money or subscriptions for a political party
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history a tramp or swagman, esp one on horseback
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Also called: bagswinger. slang someone who takes money for a bookmaker
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bagman
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.
See Examples For:
His experience demonstrates that far from ridding sports of backroom deals and bagman boosters, the deluge of legal NIL money incentivizes and gives cover to the illicit market.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
And never has there been a more appropriate bagman to assist the biggest win of a career to date.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2024
Their first mission, which is to track a bagman with a suitcase in the Madrid airport is a nifty sequence, which gets the film off to a good start.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2023
Braun singled out Chiang, an admitted bagman, as especially untrustworthy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 21, 2023
Yet the competition between German bagman and English pedlar is real, and this commercial competition is merely an expression of a far more significant industrial competition.
From American World Policies by Walter E. Weyl
He goes through bagmen at a rate of knots.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2024
Huizar’s lawyers called Esparza and Kim, the alleged bagmen in the transaction, “admitted liars” who are “attempting to obtain leniency for their own crimes by cooperating with the government.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2021
At a caddie event for this week's AT&T Byron Nelson, Greller's fellow bagmen surprised him with a $25,000 check towards the John and Jane Greller Scholarship fund, which honors his parents.
From Golf Digest ● May 8, 2019
But these are merely the movers of the money, the bagmen, the middle men.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 22, 2017
We said good evening to the bagmen and walked out into the street.
From News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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.
