wheelman
Americannoun
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Also wheelsman a helmsperson or steersperson.
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a rider of a bicycle, tricycle, or the like.
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Slang.
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a driver, especially a chauffeur.
The mobster's wheelman was also his bodyguard.
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a person who drives the getaway car in a holdup or robbery.
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Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of wheelman
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:
“I never thought I was taking a risk. I know how good he is, I’m just fortunate we were able to get him, and man, what a wheelman he is,” said Hendrick.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 7, 2021
You see, Bug used to be an expert wheelman, the best getaway driver East of the Mississippi ever since his father left.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2020
But unlike Newman, who took up racing late in life as preparation for the lead in the 1969 classic Winning and willed himself into a first-rate wheelman, Haywood was a natural.
From The Guardian ● May 24, 2019
I hate to repeat myself, but this stumble bum and onetime automotive-leasing magnate was supposed to drive the integrity of the game; instead, he was the wheelman for the owners’ getaway car.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 1, 2017
If any other wheelman chooses to tire his muscles and overstrain his heart for a mere bit of boasting, let him do it.
From Harper's Round Table, October 1, 1895 by Various
It’s a murder of the English language in hopes of buying time for the wheelmen to start the getaway car.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 25, 2021
They chugged past dim, pine-spiked shores until the sky greyed into day and the wheelmen could pick out the flag-topped buoys that marked their submerged nets.
From Time Magazine Archive
Leaving Buffalo next morning I pass through Batavia, where the wheelmen have a most aesthetic little club-room.
From Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 From San Francisco to Teheran by Stevens, Thomas
Under these circumstances, it required a great deal of skill and watchfulness on the part of the wheelmen to keep the sails full, and at the same time to lay the course.
From Outward Bound Or, Young America Afloat by Optic, Oliver
Think of the scores of wheelmen who have been fined for riding at night without lights, to say nothing of the danger of going unlighted.
From Harper's Round Table, October 1, 1895 by Various
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.
