tradesman
Americannoun
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a person engaged in trade.
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a worker skilled in a particular craft; artisan; craftsman.
-
Chiefly British. a shopkeeper.
noun
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a man engaged in trade, esp a retail dealer
-
a skilled worker
Gender
See -man.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of tradesman
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:
“Literature nowadays is a trade,” Milvain insists: Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Fifteen years later, the tradesman stood outside Crane’s old spray booth, sanding a $25,000 rosewood bench.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2025
The first—the shark—comes from Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws, in which a sheriff, a scientist, and a tradesman roll up their sleeves and put themselves in harm’s way to defeat a ferocious great white.
From Slate ● Oct. 29, 2024
That sample later returned a name: Stewart Ahearne, a father-of-five from Greenwich in south-east London who worked as a tradesman.
From BBC ● Jan. 19, 2024
As a teenager, he watched the tradesman in town whenever he could, studying theircraft.
From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers
On a recent evening in a local pub, two builders asked other patrons for recommendations for tradesmen and were told they had to wait several weeks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026
“This was an industry of gatekeepers,” he said, adding that master tradesmen ultimately viewed their apprentices — working in the same 10- to 15-mile radius as them — as competition.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2025
Here’s how the day usually goes: At 3 p.m. sharp, about 3,500 members of Zurich’s ancient guilds — associations of artisans or tradesmen that date to the Middle Ages — embark on a parade.
From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2024
It was a huge adjustment going home but I had a lot of support from the football community and my family and some of my friends are tradesmen so they made adaptations to my home.
From BBC ● Apr. 7, 2024
This was the territory of merchants, of tradesmen, of butchers and tanners and brewsters.
From "The Inquisitor's Tale" by Adam Gidwitz
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.
