Word.ws English Dictionary

Marlboro Man

Marlboro Man noun: an iconic male character depicted in cigarette advertisements as a rugged, handsome, physically active, and very masculine smoker; a real or fictional man whose appearance or behavior evokes this character.

Noun (1)

Marlboro Man (plural Marlboro Men)

  1. An iconic male character depicted in cigarette advertisements as a rugged, handsome, physically active, and very masculine smoker; a real or fictional man whose appearance or behavior evokes this character.
    • The weather would have discouraged a Marlboro man.1958 March 24, “Sport: Ladies' Day”, in Time, archived from the original on 07 Mar 2016
    • This one, if not a knight in shining armor, is at least a Marlboro man: a tall, lanky, self-taught lawyer of "broad shoulders," whose personality, "strong and silent," was the very "embodiment of what Texans liked to think of as 'Texan.'"1990 March 11, Ronald Steel, “The Long Shadow of Ambition”, in New York Times, book review of Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro, retrieved 14 Jul 2014
    Synonyms:
    he-man

Noun (2) capitalized: Marlboro man

Marlboro man (plural Marlboro men)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Marlboro Man.

Synonyms of Marlboro Man

Forms of Marlboro Man

pluralMarlboro Men
alternative formMarlboro man
pluralMarlboro men

Origin of Marlboro Man

From the brand name of Marlboro cigarettes; first used in the mid-1950s.

Questions about Marlboro Man

What does Marlboro Man mean?
Marlboro Man means an iconic male character depicted in cigarette advertisements as a rugged, handsome, physically active, and very masculine smoker; a real or fictional man whose appearance or behavior evokes this character.
What part of speech is Marlboro Man?
Marlboro Man is a noun.
What is the plural of Marlboro Man?
The plural of Marlboro Man is Marlboro Men.

Words near Marlboro Man in the dictionary

  1. Marlbed
  2. marlberries
  3. marlberry
  4. Marlboro
  5. Marlboro County
  6. Marlboro Man
  7. Marlboro Men
  8. Marlboros
  9. Marlborough
  10. Marlborough Sounds
  11. Marlburian

Source and license

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