Word.ws English Dictionary

tinman

/ˈɪnmən//ˈtɪn.mæn/

tinman noun: a maker of tinware; a tinsmith.

Noun (1)

tinman (plural tinmen)

  1. A maker of tinware; a tinsmith.
    • He seemed to feel quite at home at the tinman's, although they were hammering and tapping away there all day, but people said that the gudewife put a dish of porridge up in the garret for him every Thursday evening; and it's no wonder that they got on well and became rich when they had a brownie in...1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 11
    • But if there are gipsies or tinmen about we shall have to keep our eyes open after anything they can lay their hands on.1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London
  2. A dealer in tinware.

Noun (2)

tinman (plural tinmen)

  1. An uncaring or heartless man; a man lacking, or seeming to lack, feelings, emotions, or concern for others.
  2. A master gene in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, whose absence causes the fly to develop without a heart.
    • Tinman belongs to a special class of genes. [...] But some genes make proteins that control other genes. Some act like master switches, triggering many different genes to work together to build a structure. Tinman is one such “master gene” for the fruit fly.2000, Carl Zimmer, “The Hidden Unity of Hearts”, in Natural History, volume 109, number 3, archived from the original on 07 Jan 2009, pages 56–61

Proper noun capitalized: Tinman

Tinman

  1. A surname.

Forms of tinman

pluraltinmen

Origin of tinman

From tin + -man.

In allusion to the character Tin Man from the Land of Oz, who lacked a heart.

Questions about tinman

What does tinman mean?
Tinman means a maker of tinware; a tinsmith.
What part of speech is tinman?
Tinman can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tinman?
Tinman is pronounced /ˈtɪn.mæn/ (US).
What is the plural of tinman?
The plural of tinman is tinmen.

Words near tinman in the dictionary

  1. Tinley Park
  2. tinleys
  3. tinlike
  4. tinmaker
  5. tinmakers
  6. tinman
  7. tinmen
  8. tinmine
  9. tinmines
  10. tinmouth
  11. tinmouths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tinman (page history and authors); Tinman (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: En-us-tinman.ogg.

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