Word.ws English Dictionary

holdman

holdman noun: a man employed in the hold of a ship to load and unload cargo.

Noun

holdman (plural holdmen)

  1. A man employed in the hold of a ship to load and unload cargo.
    • However, because the winch drivers' competence is more visible than the holdmen's, winch drivers are more vulnerable to supervision even though options for handling incompetence are limited contractually.1997, David Wellman, The Union Makes Us Strong, page 154

Proper noun capitalized: Holdman

Holdman (countable and uncountable, plural Holdmans)

  1. A surname.
  2. An unincorporated community in Umatilla County, Oregon, United States.

Forms of holdman

Noun
pluralholdmen
alternative formholdsman
Proper noun
pluralHoldmans

Origin of holdman

From hold + -man.

Various origins: * Occupational surname for a servant, from Middle English hold (“loyal, faithful”) + man (“man”). * Variant of the English surname Oldman. * Variant of German Holdmann.

Questions about holdman

What does holdman mean?
Holdman means a man employed in the hold of a ship to load and unload cargo.
What part of speech is holdman?
Holdman can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of holdman?
The plural of holdman is holdmen.

Words near holdman in the dictionary

  1. holding with the hare and running with the hounds
  2. holdingly
  3. holdings
  4. holdless
  5. holdlessness
  6. holdman
  7. Holdmans
  8. holdmen
  9. holdoff
  10. holdoffs
  11. Holdorf

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holdman (page history and authors); Holdman (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: “holdman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holdman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.