Word.ws English Dictionary

lodesman

lodesman noun: a pilot; navigator.

Noun

lodesman (plural lodesmen)

  1. (historical) A pilot; navigator.
    • River and harbor pilotage, in English maritime affairs, is called loadmanage, from loadsman or lodesman, a kind of pilot established for the safe conduct of ships and vessels in and out of harbors, or up and down navigable rivers.2009, Erastus C. Benedict, The American Admiralty
    • For much of the Middle Ages, ships had only three ranks of seamen: master, lodesman or navigator, and mariner.2011, Anne Crawford, Yorkist Lord: John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, c. 1425 -1485

Forms of lodesman

plurallodesmen
alternative formloadsman
alternative formlodeman
alternative formloadman

Origin of lodesman

From Middle English lodesman, lodesmon, lodysman (“pilot”, literally “lode's or course's man”), alteration of earlier lodeman, from Old English lādmann (“a leader, guide”), equivalent to lode (“way, course”) + -s- + man. Compare to lodemanage.

Words formed from lodesman

Questions about lodesman

What does lodesman mean?
Lodesman means a pilot; navigator.
What part of speech is lodesman?
Lodesman is a noun.
What is the plural of lodesman?
The plural of lodesman is lodesmen.

Words near lodesman in the dictionary

  1. Loders
  2. lodes
  3. Lodeses
  4. lodeship
  5. lodeships
  6. lodesman
  7. lodesmen
  8. lodestar
  9. lodestars
  10. lodestone
  11. lodestones

Source and license

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