seaman
noun
a person skilled in seamanship.
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seaman
1 American
[see-muhn]
/ ˈsi mən /
noun
-
seamen
plural
-
a person skilled in seamanship.
-
a person whose trade or occupation is assisting in the handling, sailing, and navigating of a ship during a voyage, especially one below the rank of officer; sailor.
-
U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. an enlisted person ranking below petty officer.
Seaman
2
American
[see-muhn]
/ ˈsi mən /
noun
seaman
British
/ ˈsiːmən /
noun
-
a rating trained in seamanship as opposed to electrical engineering, etc
-
a man who serves as a sailor
-
a person skilled in seamanship
Synonym Usage
See sailor.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of seaman
First recorded before 900; Middle English seeman, Old English sǣmann. See sea, 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:
"We don't have enough water on board right now. We got food a few days back," said one Indian seaman stuck in a small refuelling boat off Iraq, within sight of the Iranian shore.
From Barron's ● Mar. 20, 2026
Directed by Bille August, this ‘Masterpiece’ adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic stars Sam Claflin as the wronged seaman and Jeremy Irons as his friend and fellow prisoner.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 19, 2026
Back outside, with a view of the port and the sunlit open sea, we met a merchant seaman, relaxing on a bench, who told us his son worked for the New York Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2025
His performance as the naïve young seaman, hanged for killing an officer in self-defence, won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2025
Further south, towards the Mediterranean basin, you might have seen a seaman being punished for gambling, under a law of Richard Coeur de Lion.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
He began supporting Arsenal at the age of 10 when his uncle bought him a set of fridge magnets with the images of Gunners stars including Sylvain Wiltord, David Seaman, Sol Campbell, and Thierry Henry.
From BBC ● May 28, 2026
Chad Seaman, a researcher at Akamai, joked at one point that the internet could go down if Brundage spent too much time on his exams.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
That giant botnet, called Kimwolf, is the most powerful ever assembled, said Chad Seaman, a security researcher at the networking company Akamai.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 28, 2026
"It's producing fragments of building stone, so it might be structural. We might be thinking of a small shrine or a chapel," says Dr Andy Seaman, from Cardiff University, who is leading the dig.
From BBC ● Dec. 31, 2025
They were signed by the radioman’s assistant, a Seaman Philip Milholland—he’d transcribed the radio transmissions.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
But the FAA expressly excludes from arbitration “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
From Slate ● Jun. 3, 2026
A boatswain on a merchant ship, who supervises the deck’s seamen and manages equipment like ropes and cables, can earn nearly $5,200 a month.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 5, 2026
In 2025 the number had ballooned to 410, with 6,223 merchant seamen falling victim.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2026
The researchers have estimated that the proportion of lung cancers related to onboard asbestos exposure were of the order of 27 per cent in Australian seamen and 12 per cent in British seamen.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 14, 2023
And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering.
From "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho
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.
