Word.ws English Dictionary

defenceman

defenceman noun: in ice hockey and lacrosse, a player position with a primary responsibility to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals; same as defender in many other ballgames.

Noun

defenceman (plural defencemen)

  1. In ice hockey and lacrosse, a player position with a primary responsibility to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals; same as defender in many other ballgames.
    • Hulking defenceman Gudbranson, who came to Vancouver in a trade with the Florida Panthers last May, scored in his debut for the Canucks.2016 September 29, Jason Keller, “Eberle-McDavid-Lucic line debuts in Oilers pre-season loss to Canucks”, in CBC, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2023

Forms of defenceman

pluraldefencemen

Origin of defenceman

From defence + -man.

Questions about defenceman

What does defenceman mean?
Defenceman means in ice hockey and lacrosse, a player position with a primary responsibility to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals; same as defender in many other ballgames.
What part of speech is defenceman?
Defenceman is a noun.
What is the plural of defenceman?
The plural of defenceman is defencemen.

Words near defenceman in the dictionary

  1. defence-splitting
  2. defenced
  3. defenceless
  4. defencelessly
  5. defencelessness
  6. defenceman
  7. defencemen
  8. defences
  9. defences in depth
  10. defencible
  11. defencing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defenceman (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: “defenceman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/defenceman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.