Word.ws English Dictionary

boothman

boothman noun: one who mans a booth, such as at a fair or (historically) a Thing.

Noun

boothman (plural boothmen)

  1. (rare) One who mans a booth, such as at a fair or (historically) a Thing.
    • A little later a man came running and he called urgently for Leif Ossursson, bade him go in haste to Gilli lawspeaker's booth: — Sigurd Thorlaksson ran in through the doorflap there and he wounded one of his boothmen to the death.1994, George Johnston, Thrand of Gotu: two Icelandic sagas from the Flat Island book, page 108
    • He had seen the boothmen and horse dealers at fairs playing brightly colored cards, and gentlemen at Shea's with their cards, cigars, and brandies.2007, Peter Behrens, The Law of Dreams, page 186
  2. (archaic, dialectal) A corn merchant, especially one in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
    • He was not a native of Newcastle, but bad apparently come from the country in youth to serve his apprenticeship as a boothman, or corn merchant; had gone, when out of his time, to gain experience of commercial life in Germany; and […]1890, Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, volume 4, page 540
    • He served his time to a boothman or corn-merchant of Newcastle, and married Elizabeth, daughter of John Stephenson of Newcastle and Knaresdale. Through the death of both of his brothers, he inherited the patrimonial estates […]1894, Maberly Phillips, A History of Banks, Bankers, & Banking in Northumberland, Durham, & North Yorkshire, page 395
  3. A projectionist at a movie theater.
    • Two veteran eastern Connecticut boothmen died recently: Irwin Dawley, 55, projectionist at the Stanley Warner Garde, […]1958, Motion Picture Herald, volumes 212-213, page 23

Forms of boothman

pluralboothmen

Origin of boothman

From booth + -man. Cognate with Scots buthman (“a shop-keeper”). In some cases, such as translations of Norse sagas, use of the word (to mean "one who mans a booth") was probably reinforced by the cognate Old Norse búðarmaðr (Icelandic búðarmaður).

Questions about boothman

What does boothman mean?
Boothman means one who mans a booth, such as at a fair or (historically) a Thing.
What part of speech is boothman?
Boothman is a noun.
What is the plural of boothman?
The plural of boothman is boothmen.

Words near boothman in the dictionary

  1. boothie
  2. boothies
  3. boothite
  4. boothless
  5. boothlike
  6. boothman
  7. boothmate
  8. boothmates
  9. boothmen
  10. bootholder
  11. bootholders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boothman (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “boothman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boothman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.