Word.ws English Dictionary

landsman

landsman noun: a person who does not go to sea, who lacks the skills of a sailor or who is uncomfortable on ships or boats.

Noun

landsman (plural landsmen)

  1. A person who does not go to sea, who lacks the skills of a sailor or who is uncomfortable on ships or boats.
    • So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Leg and Arm. The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers...
    • If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot farther forward, he would probably say: “James, or William, one of you push that plank forward, please”; but put the mate in his place, and he would roar out: “Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now! What're you about!..."1883, Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
    Antonyms:
    seaman
  2. (oil industry) A person who negotiates leases, contracts and other business deals between producers and landowners.
  3. A fellow Jew who comes from the same district or town, especially in Eastern Europe.
  4. Someone of a similar heritage or belief system.
  5. (obsolete) A military rank given to naval recruits.

Proper noun capitalized: Landsman

Landsman (plural Landsmans)

  1. A surname.

Antonyms of landsman

Forms of landsman

Noun
plurallandsmen
alternative formlandman
Proper noun
pluralLandsmans

Plural of landsman: landsmen

Origin of landsman

From land + -s- + man. In meanings 3 and 4, influenced by Yiddish לאַנדסמאַן (landsman). Compare also German Landsmann, Norwegian landsmann. Doublet of lantzman.

Questions about landsman

What does landsman mean?
Landsman means a person who does not go to sea, who lacks the skills of a sailor or who is uncomfortable on ships or boats.
What part of speech is landsman?
Landsman can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of landsman?
The plural of landsman is landsmen.

Words near landsman in the dictionary

  1. landsliding
  2. landslidings
  3. landslip
  4. landslips
  5. Landsmaal
  6. landsman
  7. Landsmans
  8. landsmanschaft
  9. landsmanschaftn
  10. landsmanschafts
  11. landsmanshaft

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: landsman (page history and authors); Landsman (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)-Flame, not lame-landsman.wav.

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