fireman
Americannoun
-
a person employed to extinguish or prevent fires; firefighter.
-
a person employed to tend fires; stoker.
-
Railroads.
-
a person employed to fire and lubricate a steam locomotive.
-
a person employed to assist the engineer of a diesel or electric locomotive.
-
-
U.S. Navy. an enlisted person assigned to the care and operation of a ship's machinery.
-
British Mining. fire boss.
-
Baseball. relief pitcher.
noun
-
Gender-neutral form: firefighter. a man who fights fires, usually a public employee or trained volunteer
-
-
(on steam locomotives) the man who stokes the fire and controls the injectors feeding water to the boiler
-
(on diesel and electric locomotives) the driver's assistant
-
-
a man who tends furnaces; stoker
-
US equivalent: fire boss. Also called: deputy. a mine official responsible for safety precautions
-
navy a junior rating who works on marine engineering equipment
-
informal any employee who is dispatched to deal with trouble at short notice
Gender
See -man.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fireman
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:
He volunteered at the Poppy Line heritage railway, as a fireman and later station master, and led ramblers' walks across Norfolk.
From BBC ● May 6, 2026
“Those corridors fill up with smoke, so now you’re having to do a fireman crawl along the floor for potentially hundreds of feet,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 23, 2025
Replete with Constructivist angles, it’s an unsentimental account of a woman who tells her fireman husband he isn’t the father of their newborn.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025
Once again, he is both arsonist and fireman.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2025
Stuart ran for the yardstick and slid down, like a fireman coming down a pole in a firehouse.
From "Stuart Little" by E.B. White
Volunteer firemen is a tradition as old as the nation, but fewer young people are signing up to do the job.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
In the Nashville airport, he found himself alongside a group of firemen heading to Oklahoma to help with the rescue.
From Slate ● Apr. 19, 2026
This was a leader who rolled up his sleeves and stacked sandbags alongside firemen and volunteers, when toxic red sludge from a bauxite mine engulfed a Hungarian valley and threatened the Danube shore in 2010.
From BBC ● Apr. 5, 2026
She said she was interested in meeting the firemen after seeing them on the t.v..
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2024
In the meantime Arne Stolbaad’s chimney fire expired; when the firemen showed up at last he expressed to them his delight at having burned clean the flue creosote.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
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.
