Minuteman
Americannoun
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(sometimes lowercase) a member of a group of American militiamen just before and during the Revolutionary War who held themselves in readiness for instant military service.
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a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile with three stages, powered by solid-propellant rocket engines.
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a member of a small, secret, ultraconservative organization formed into armed groups for the declared purpose of conducting guerrilla warfare against a communist invasion of the U.S.
noun
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(sometimes not capital) (in the War of American Independence) a colonial militiaman who promised to be ready to fight at one minute's notice
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a US three-stage intercontinental ballistic missile
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Minuteman
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:
Caroline, who spent her last year at Harvard Business School taking classes on buying and operating small businesses, took over running Minuteman after Nat’s job started.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
Ed Bouquillon noticed more students from affluent families at Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School in upscale Lexington as parents’ attitudes shifted.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
And while the Minuteman missiles were unique in having the power and accuracy to destroy the enemy’s blast-hardened missile silos, the submarines’ Trident II missiles, which were first deployed in 1990, have the same capability.
From Slate ● Jul. 2, 2025
The last routine test took place on Nov. 5 when a Minuteman III was launched from the Vandenberg base and traveled 4,200 miles to the Marshall Islands.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2025
We more than doubled our acquisition rate of Polaris submarines—we doubled the production capacity for Minuteman missiles—and increased by 50 percent the number of manned bombers standing ready on a 15 minute alert.
From State of the Union Address by Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald)
Rat was doing sound at the club Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach in the mid-1980s when the Minutemen were onstage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2024
The Minutemen are 50 years old, and while they’ve been modified many times, they will probably need to be mothballed someday.
From Slate ● Feb. 2, 2024
In 1981 the band made its way to Hermosa Beach to record its 11-song self-titled debut in the same studio where Black Flag, the Minutemen and Saccharine Trust recorded early material for the label.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2023
“I said, Hey, let’s forget about this multitrack stuff,” he recalled in the Minutemen documentary.
From New York Times ● Mar. 7, 2023
And part of the idea was to make sure that Redding Tories wouldn’t be able to do to the Continentals what the Minutemen had done to the British at Concord and Lexington six months earlier.
From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
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.
