Word.ws English Dictionary

odd man

UK/ˈɒd man/

odd man noun: in a group having an odd number of people, someone with the casting vote; an arbiter.

Noun

odd man (plural odd men)

  1. In a group having an odd number of people, someone with the casting vote; an arbiter.
  2. Someone who does odd jobs.
    • ‘My father always kept a dog-cart, and we had three servants. We had a cook and a housemaid and an odd man.’1915, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 58, in Of Human Bondage
    • Their complexion was lustreless and clammy, although Aunt Evelyn's odd man had given them all the energy of his elbow.1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 86
  3. A man who trains in company with a boat's crew, so that he can take the place of anybody who falls ill.

Forms of odd man

pluralodd men

Origin of odd man

From odd + man, probably after a Scandinavian source. Compare Old Norse odda-maðr.

Questions about odd man

What does odd man mean?
Odd man means in a group having an odd number of people, someone with the casting vote; an arbiter.
What part of speech is odd man?
Odd man is a noun.
How do you pronounce odd man?
Odd man is pronounced /ˈɒd man/ (UK).
What is the plural of odd man?
The plural of odd man is odd men.

Words near odd man in the dictionary

  1. odd jobs
  2. odd lot
  3. odd lots
  4. odd lotter
  5. odd lotters
  6. odd man
  7. odd man out
  8. odd man wins
  9. odd men
  10. odd men out
  11. odd number

Source and license

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