Word.ws English Dictionary

waterman

waterman noun: a seaman, a sailor.

Noun

waterman (plural watermen)

  1. (obsolete) A seaman, a sailor.
  2. A man who lives or works on the water; a boatman.
  3. Someone who distributes or supplies water for a living; a water-carrier.
    • An elderly sheik shared this little ceremony with us, and afterwards benignly gave the waterman a coin and made him spurt scented water on his face and beard.1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 105
  4. (dated) Specifically, an attendant on cab stands who supplies water to the horses.
    • ‘Here you are, sir,’ shouted a strange specimen of the human race, in a sackcloth coat, and apron of the same, who, with a brass label and number round his neck, looked as if he were catalogued in some collection of rarities. This was the waterman.1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers 2
  5. A man skilled in multiple aquatic sports disciplines, such as surfing, bodysurfing, undersea diving, canoe paddling, fishing, etc.

Proper noun capitalized: Waterman

Waterman (countable and uncountable, plural Watermans)

  1. An occupational surname.
  2. A village in DeKalb County, Illinois.
  3. A ghost town in Wheeler County, Oregon.
  4. An unincorporated community in Kitsap County, Washington.

waterman meaning in Tamil

waterman in Tamil

வாடகைப் படகோட்டி

Forms of waterman

Noun
pluralwatermen
Proper noun
pluralWatermans

Plural of waterman: watermen

Origin of waterman

From Middle English waterman, equivalent to water + -man.

From the occupation of waterman, from water + man.

Words formed from waterman

Questions about waterman

What does waterman mean?
Waterman means a seaman, a sailor.
What is waterman in Tamil?
Waterman in Tamil is வாடகைப் படகோட்டி. See Waterman meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is waterman?
Waterman can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of waterman?
The plural of waterman is watermen.

Words near waterman in the dictionary

  1. waterly
  2. watermain
  3. watermains
  4. watermaker
  5. watermakers
  6. waterman
  7. waterman's knot
  8. waterman's knots
  9. Watermans
  10. watermanship
  11. watermark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waterman (page history and authors); Waterman (page history and authors); waterman (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-waterman.wav.

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