Word.ws English Dictionary

man in black

man in black noun: the referee.

Noun

man in black (plural men in black)

  1. (informal) The referee.
  2. A covert government operative, wearing a black suit and black aviator sunglasses, believed by conspiracy theorists to cover up UFO incidents.
    • Ever since the cessation of activity by Albert Bender in 1954, and followed closely by a few others, whose disappear[a]nce though less spectacular, from this field of work, caused a stir among the then active workers; the words he used in reference to his case "that he had been visited by three men...1958, The Australian Saucer Record, volume 4, number 4, page 1
    • Often they arrive at the scene of a UFO landing before those involves have had a chance to tell their story to the authorities, indicating that these Men-in-Black can read – as well as CONTROL – minds.1991 March 26, John A. Keel, “Who are the UFO silencers?”, in Weekly World News, volume 12, number 25, page 8

Proper noun capitalized: Man in Black

the Man in Black

  1. The country musician Johnny Cash.
    • The Man In Black was long and lean / Hit the Billboard charts with a Teenage Queen / Had a television show, the best we'd seen / That chick-a-boom rock really made a splash / Missing ol' Johnny Cash2015, “Missing Ol’ Johnny Cash”, performed by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard

Forms of man in black

pluralmen in black

Origin of man in black

Derived from the fact that Cash regularly performed live music whilst wearing black clothes.

Questions about man in black

What does man in black mean?
Man in black means the referee.
What part of speech is man in black?
Man in black can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of man in black?
The plural of man in black is men in black.

Words near man in black in the dictionary

  1. man hour
  2. man hours
  3. man hug
  4. man hugs
  5. man hunt
  6. man in black
  7. man in motion
  8. man in the middle
  9. man in the mirror
  10. man in the moon
  11. man in the street

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: man in black (page history and authors); Man in Black (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: “man in black.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/man_in_black. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.