Word.ws English Dictionary

leading man

leading man noun: a man who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a person who frequently plays such roles.

Noun

leading man (plural leading men)

  1. A man who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a person who frequently plays such roles.
    • He was never intended as the leading man. He and Monica were never story-arced to get married.2023 October 29, Zoe Williams, “‘An ironic, self-deprecating metrosexual’: how Matthew Perry captured the spirit of the age”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
  2. The type of conventionally handsome and approachable man who is perceived as being capable of playing male lead roles in movies or other productions.

Forms of leading man

pluralleading men

Questions about leading man

What does leading man mean?
Leading man means a man who does or can play the lead role in a movie, play or other production; a person who frequently plays such roles.
What part of speech is leading man?
Leading man is a noun.
What is the plural of leading man?
The plural of leading man is leading men.

Words near leading man in the dictionary

  1. leading lady
  2. leading light
  3. leading lights
  4. leading line
  5. leading lines
  6. leading man
  7. leading men
  8. leading motive
  9. leading motives
  10. leading nowhere
  11. leading off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leading 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: “leading man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leading_man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.