strongman
Americannoun
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strongmen
plural
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a person who performs remarkable feats of strength, as in a circus.
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a political leader who controls by force; dictator.
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the most powerful or influential person in an organization or business, by reason of skill in the formulation and execution of plans, work, etc.
noun
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a performer, esp one in a circus, who performs feats of strength
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any person regarded as a source of power, capability, initiative, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of strongman
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:
It is the most popular game on earth because it asks for nothing but a ball and other people, and rewards what the strongman cannot abide: cooperation, trust, the surrender of the self.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
AFP was given rare access to the competition, held at an equestrian complex in the capital Ashgabat and presided over by strongman president Serdar Berdymukhamedov, Gurbanguly's son.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
He also represented Alex Saab, who American prosecutors said laundered money for Venezuela’s former strongman, Nicolás Maduro, and oversaw the importation of often-rotten food to a poverty-stricken country.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
"He has shaped the image of the first populist president, the first acclaimed strongman of the 21st Century."
From BBC ● May 30, 2026
Gina sets her arms into a strongman pose and shouts, “Bring it!”
From "A Heart in a Body in the World" by Deb Caletti
Fabrizio Foschini, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said during earlier decades of war "mining mainly benefited insurgent groups, including the Taliban, and local strongmen with links to corrupt government officials".
From Barron's ● Aug. 9, 2026
Among the many contentious strongmen who have popped up worldwide in the first decades of the 21st century, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is the most confounding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
The father and son strongmen have frequently paired up to train together and have been spotted rehearsing the elegant poses that made Schwarzenegger a star.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026
Even strongmen, such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lost ground in an election that many experts assumed would be a rousing coronation.
From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2024
I hadn’t seen it while they were sitting, but now that they were moving it was painfully obvious they were church strongmen.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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.
