Word.ws English Dictionary

legman

Syllables: leg·man/ˈlɛɡˌmæn/US/ˈlɛɡˌmæn/

legman noun: a person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place; an errand boy or errand girl, a runner.

Noun

legman (plural legmen)

  1. A person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place; an errand boy or errand girl, a runner.
    • During the nine-month Great Lakes shipping season, the ore hogs—shovelers, "larry" car weighers, bulldozer operators, car pushers and "leg" men—unite in this miracle of supply that stock-piles enough iron ore to last through the winter. The leg man on a Hulett iron-ore unloader must possess a...1953 May, Dwight Boyer, “Giant Jaws Unload Ore Ship”, in H[enry] H[aven] Windsor, Jr., editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 99, number 5, Chicago, Ill.: Popular Mechanics Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 76
    • [W]ell, anyway, he sent a chap who acts as his confidential ‘leg-man’ and ‘Man Friday’.1958, Harry Stephen Keeler, Hazel Goodwin Keeler, “The Affair of the Two Other Men”, in The Case of the Two-headed Idiot: A Double-mystery Novel, 2nd edition, [United States]: Ramble House, published...
    Synonyms:
    gofer
  2. A reporter who frequently travels to conduct research, interview witnesses, etc., and then conveys the information to a rewriteman who writes up the story.
    • [page 136] This was my abrupt introduction to the system by which most of the live news is handled for the New York evening newspapers [...] Its continued use has bred up two distinct and separate types of news-specialists—the leg man, who gets the story, but rarely writes it; and the rewrite man...1913, Irvin S[hrewsbury] Cobb, The Saturday Evening Post, volume 185, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 23; republished in “The Third Stick”, in Stickfuls...
    • Morris Cramm was night legman for a columnist and worked from seven in the evening to five in the morning.1949, John Macdonald [pseudonym; Kenneth Millar], chapter 5, in The Moving Target, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →OCLC; republished as Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target (Vintage Crime/Black...

Proper noun capitalized: Legman

Legman (plural Legmans)

  1. A surname.

legman meaning in Arabic

legman in Arabic

person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place — see also errand boy, runner
فَيْج fayj

Examples of legman in a sentence

  • Guillam was boss and legman, and twice a day he dropped the tapes on the Berne residency, using a parked car as a letter-box.1974, John le Carré [pseudonym; David John Moore Cornwell], chapter 21, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, London: Hodder and Stoughton, →ISBN...
  • One legman descended from his post on a small raised platform to the deck next to the crane.1992 August, “Analysis”, in Selected Occupational Fatalities Related to Marine Cargo Handling as Found in Reports of OSHA...
  • Fenady] became a legman for Paul Coates, which led to writing and producing Coates' controversial television series, Confidential File, winner of three Emmy awards.1998, Andrew J. Fenady, “[Biography of Andrew J. Fenady]”, in Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus: A Play in Two Acts: […], Woodstock...
  • He [Walter Lippmann] studied at Harvard with [George] Santayana, took tea with William James, worked as a legman for Lincoln Steffens, debated socialism with [George] Bernard Shaw and H.1999, Ronald Steel, “Prologue: The Name that Opened Every Door”, in Walter Lippmann and the American Century, new edition, New Brunswick...

Synonyms of legman

Forms of legman

Noun
plurallegmen
alternative formleg man
Proper noun
pluralLegmans

Origin of legman

From leg + -man, modelled after legwork, in reference to the walking such a person does.

Questions about legman

What does legman mean?
Legman means a person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place; an errand boy or errand girl, a runner.
What is legman in Arabic?
Legman in Arabic is فَيْج (fayj). See Legman meaning in Arabic.
How do you use legman in a sentence?
Guillam was boss and legman, and twice a day he dropped the tapes on the Berne residency, using a parked car as a letter-box.
What part of speech is legman?
Legman can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce legman?
Legman is pronounced /ˈlɛɡˌmæn/ (UK).
What is the plural of legman?
The plural of legman is legmen.

Words near legman in the dictionary

  1. leglet
  2. leglets
  3. leglike
  4. leglock
  5. leglocks
  6. legman
  7. legmen
  8. Legnica
  9. lego
  10. lego-literary
  11. legoglobin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legman (page history and authors); Legman (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)-Mélange a trois-legman.wav.

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