Word.ws English Dictionary

keyman

keyman noun: a telegraph operator.

Noun

keyman (plural keymen)

  1. (dated) A telegraph operator.
    • Conscious of their importance, the 324 labor delegates marched bravely in and elected by acclaim as their president a onetime Ontario telegraph keyman, Senator Gideon Decker Robertson […]1932, Time (volume 19, part 2)
  2. (India) A workman who checks a railway track for faults, and who carries a keying hammer.
  3. An employee of vital importance to a business.
    • A corporation may feel the need for life insurance on one of its keymen under a variety of circumstances.1957, Pearce Shepherd, Andrew C. Webster, Selection of risks
    • As the keymen learn how to handle confidential company information, the owner-manager can disclose more to them. In most very small firms, the keymen will be "working" bosses.2000, Harvey C. Krentzman, The essentials of business management for profit, page 123

Forms of keyman

pluralkeymen

Origin of keyman

From key + man.

Words formed from keyman

Questions about keyman

What does keyman mean?
Keyman means a telegraph operator.
What part of speech is keyman?
Keyman is a noun.
What is the plural of keyman?
The plural of keyman is keymen.

Words near keyman in the dictionary

  1. keylogging
  2. Keylon
  3. Keylons
  4. keymaker
  5. keymakers
  6. keyman
  7. keyman insurance
  8. keymap
  9. keymapping
  10. keymappings
  11. keymaps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keyman (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.

Last updated:

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