fireman
Americannoun
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firemen
plural
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a person employed to extinguish or prevent fires; firefighter.
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a person employed to tend fires; stoker.
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Railroads.
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a person employed to fire and lubricate a steam locomotive.
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a person employed to assist the engineer of a diesel or electric locomotive.
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U.S. Navy. an enlisted person assigned to the care and operation of a ship's machinery.
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British Mining. fire boss.
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Baseball. relief pitcher.
noun
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Gender-neutral form: firefighter. a man who fights fires, usually a public employee or trained volunteer
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(on steam locomotives) the man who stokes the fire and controls the injectors feeding water to the boiler
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(on diesel and electric locomotives) the driver's assistant
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a man who tends furnaces; stoker
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US equivalent: fire boss. Also called: deputy. a mine official responsible for safety precautions
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navy a junior rating who works on marine engineering equipment
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informal any employee who is dispatched to deal with trouble at short notice
Gender
See -man.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fireman
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:
“Forget that one. It’s gone,” they heard one fireman say, referring to their house.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026
"So it is!" chimed in an off-duty fireman nearby.
From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026
Once again, he is both arsonist and fireman.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2025
And the times they couldn’t, Roberts would turn to left-hander Alex Vesia to be his primary fireman.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2025
My stepfather worked as a furnace fireman for the New York City Housing Authority, fixing and maintaining the huge boilers that heated the Red Hook Housing Projects where we lived then.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
As they were driving away when evacuating, they could see on their app that there were firemen with hoses walking around.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026
In northern Portugal, in Valpacos, nearly 800 firemen were battling a forest fire that was spreading, the civil protection service said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026
In the Nashville airport, he found himself alongside a group of firemen heading to Oklahoma to help with the rescue.
From Slate ● Apr. 19, 2026
"I always felt like I was surrounded by such incredible people, lifeguards that were also firemen or firewomen. It was really, really, empowering."
From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2025
He told us that the County Clerk’s Office took an extra beating because the firemen flooded the entire building instead of just putting out the fire.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
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.
