Word.ws English Dictionary

green man

green man noun: a small figure of a walking man illuminated in green on a traffic light at a pedestrian crossing, indicating that it is safe to cross the road.

green man: a small figure of a walking man illuminated in green on a traffic light at a pedestrian crossing,...
Image: Penyulap, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

green man (plural green men)

  1. (Ireland, UK) A small figure of a walking man illuminated in green on a traffic light at a pedestrian crossing, indicating that it is safe to cross the road.
  2. In performances and pageants, a character adorned in foliage often carrying a club, who represents a wild man of the woods.

Proper noun capitalized: Green Man

Green Man (plural Green Men)

  1. (historical) A character in British folklore often depicted as a foliate head; any of certain similarly-depicted figures from other cultures, hypothesised to share a common folkloric or mythological root.
    • The widespread vegetation cults attest to the probability that the Green Man, in all of his guises, originated at the beginning of the agricultural age at least 7,000 years BCE. The symbolism inherent in the Green Man is a reflection of the archetypal lore of life-death-rebirth, the endless cycle...2006, Gary R. Varner, The Mythic Forest, the Green Man and the Spirit of Nature, Algora Publishing, page 122
    • Invoking Jungian Psychology, William Anderson identified the Green Man as an archetype symbolising our oneness with the earth. None of the ingenious interpretations of the Green Man image which have appeared in recent years have fully addressed the question: why is the foliage-disgorging Green Man...2006, James Coulter, The Green Man Unmasked, Author House, page vii
  2. A green spandex bodysuit, often used for green screens.
    • “Hey, what are you guys doing?” “Dude, we're gonna tailgate the tryouts.” “Oh, shit. That's a good idea. Oh, you gonna bust out Green Man, bro?” “No. No Green Man.” “What's Green Man?” “Well, in high school, Charlie was like our school mascot.” “A mascot nobody wanted. He'd get wasted and dress in...2007 September 13, Charlie Day & David Hornsby & Glenn Howerton, “The Gang Gets Invincible” (3:56 from the start), in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, season 3, episode 2, spoken by Dennis Reynolds...
    • “Listen, the weather is in your blood. You should be the Green Man holding the fluffy white fun bags.” “Do you mean clouds?” “If only you could think of a way to get into that Cloud Guy suit.” “Like, if it shrank. Yes. So I need to... invent a shrink ray?” “No. At the station, use the dryer.”2025 August 14, Asha Michelle Wilson, “Anchor Ham Adventure” (11:42 from the start), in The Great North, season 5, episode 19, spoken by Gustin Tobin (Paul F. Tompkins)

Forms of green man

Noun
pluralgreen men
Proper noun
pluralGreen Men

Questions about green man

What does green man mean?
Green man means a small figure of a walking man illuminated in green on a traffic light at a pedestrian crossing, indicating that it is safe to cross the road.
What part of speech is green man?
Green man can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of green man?
The plural of green man is green men.

Words near green man in the dictionary

  1. green lungs
  2. green lynx spider
  3. green lynx spiders
  4. green mamba
  5. green mambas
  6. green man
  7. green manure
  8. green manures
  9. green marble
  10. green marsh hawk
  11. green marsh hawks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: green man (page history and authors); Green Man (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: “green man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/green_man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.