Word.ws English Dictionary

harvestman

harvestman noun: a male harvester; any harvester (person who works to gather in the crops at harvest time).

harvestman: a male harvester; any harvester (person who works to gather in the crops at harvest time)
Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Lance Cheung/Multimedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

harvestman (plural harvestmen)

  1. A male harvester; any harvester (person who works to gather in the crops at harvest time).
    • Near-synonym: carter
    Synonyms:
    carter
  2. An order of terrestrial, non-venomous arachnids with often very long legs: Opiliones; any individual of this order.
    Synonyms:
    daddy longlegs, harvest spider, grandfather-graybeard, harry-longlegs, shepherd spider

Synonyms of harvestman

All synonyms of harvestman

Forms of harvestman

pluralharvestmen

Origin of harvestman

From harvest + -man. (sense 2): There are various hypotheses and folk etymologies for why the arachnids are called harvestmen, but the most likely explanation is the shape of their legs, which resemble sickles or scythes. More information The association with harvesting or haymaking is found across Europe; compare words for “harvest spider” in other languages: Dutch hooiwagen (literally “hay-cart”), Welsh medelwr (literally “reaper, harvester”), Irish Pilib an fhómhair (literally “Philip of the harvest”), Danish mejer (literally “mower, reaper”), French faucheur (literally “scyther”), Spanish segador (literally “reaper, harvester, mower”) and agostero (literally “August-er”), Czech sekáč (literally “reaper, mower; warrior”), Polish kosarz (literally “reaper, mower, haymaker”), Russian сенокосец (senokosec, literally “little haymaker”) and косиножка (kosinožka, literally “little scythe-leg”), Ukrainian косарик (kosaryk, literally “mower”), Hungarian kaszáspók (literally “scyther-spider”), Serbo-Croatian pauk kosac (literally “reaper spider”), and even modern Hebrew קוצר (kotsér, originally “shortener”, literally “reaper, harvester”). Further compare German Schneider (literally...

Questions about harvestman

What does harvestman mean?
Harvestman means a male harvester; any harvester (person who works to gather in the crops at harvest time).
What part of speech is harvestman?
Harvestman is a noun.
What is the plural of harvestman?
The plural of harvestman is harvestmen.

Words near harvestman in the dictionary

  1. harvestfishes
  2. harvestible
  3. harvesting
  4. harvestings
  5. harvestless
  6. harvestman
  7. harvestmen
  8. harvestries
  9. harvestry
  10. harvests
  11. harvesttime

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harvestman (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-harvestman.wav.

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