foretopman

English

Etymology

foretop + -man

Noun

foretopman (plural foretopmen)

  1. (nautical) A sailor who controls the masts in the foretop.
    • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 12,
      It was a warm night for the latitude; and the Foretopman, whose watch at the time was properly below, was dozing on the uppermost deck whither he had ascended from his hot hammock
    • 2009 March 8, Alessandra Stanley, “The Vanishing Sidekick”, in New York Times:
      WHEN Jimmy Fallon showed up on NBC ’s “Late Night” last week without a sidekick, it looked like yet another sign that the Ed McMahon era is over; so many talk show hosts work solo that the second-banana position seems almost as obsolete as the foretopman or the Linotype operator.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.