junkman

¹

[juhngk-man]

noun

plural

junkmen 

1. a dealer in resalable used metal, paper, rags, and other junk.

junkman

²

[juhngk-muhn, -man]

noun

plural

junkmen 

1. a member of the crew of a junk.

junkman

/ ˈdʒʌŋkˌmæn /

noun

1. Also called: rag-and-bone man. a man who buys and sells discarded clothing, furniture, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of junkman¹

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75; junk ¹ + man

Origin of junkman²

First recorded in 1860–65; junk ² + man

Example Sentences

Comedian Redd Foxx, who became a television star playing an irascible, bawdy junkman in “Sanford and Son” and returned nearly two decades later in the current CBS series “The Royal Family,” died Friday of a heart attack.

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“I still don’t know where that gumption came from, I had never talked like that before,” Asner wrote in his 2019 autobiography, “Son of a Junkman.”

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So just how good was Ed Asner, this down-to-earth son of a Kansas City junkman who broke free from his parents’ towropes of heavy skepticism by becoming an A-list actor?

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At a Whole Foods in Jericho, Mr. Stepanian, a scruffy 36-year-old with piercing blue eyes, wheeled a hand truck through the labyrinthine corridors of the store’s backstage like a junkman of old, stopping at Produce and Dairy and Prepared Foods and calling out greetings to familiar faces.

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He recorded two of the poems — “Autobiography” and “Junkman’s Obbligato” — with the Cellar Jazz Quintet of San Francisco on a 1957 album with Rexroth called “Poetry Readings in the Cellar.”

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