landsman
1 Americannoun
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Also a person who lives or works on land.
-
an inexperienced sailor or one who has not been to sea before.
noun
noun
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a person who works or lives on land, as distinguished from a seaman
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a person with no experience at sea
noun
Gender
See -man.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of landsman
before 1000 for sense “native”; Middle English landes man, londes man, Old English landes mann; see land, 's 1, -man
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:
She married a landsman, who became a diamond merchant; in the early nineteen-fifties, the couple resettled in the Bronx, and some fifteen years later, as empty-nesters, they went back to Israel.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 8, 2017
He had the tolerance of a landsman, the faith that comes with witnessing the changing seasons year in and year out.
From Time ● Jul. 25, 2012
Harry became a landsman, and took up pharmacy.
From Time Magazine Archive
Washington had the tolerance of a landsman, the faith that comes with witnessing the changing seasons year in and year out, the sensitivity that accumulates from watching buds burst and colts grow.
From Time Magazine Archive
Farmer, goatherd, cattleherd, hunter or artisan, the landsman looks at the ocean as at a salt unsteady realm that has nothing to do with him at all.
From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Our people, we’re schmoozers,” Bacall lamented as he prodded his landsmen to move it along.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2023
“I love my landsmen, but I will never ever understand them,” she posted on Facebook two weeks ago, after a young mother in her community died from COVID-19 in late November.
From Slate ● Dec. 6, 2020
The pitch from the gas companies’ representatives, known as landsmen, were effective, she said.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2011
An endless stream of obvious landsmen with nautical aspirations tramped bravely up the gangways and roamed the concentrated, neat interiors.
From Time Magazine Archive
No one can say for sure where he was killed, whether some hostile landsmen or the sea, the stormwaves on the deep sea, got the best of him.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
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.
