Deckhand
//ˈdɛkˌhænd// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A member of the crew of a merchant ship who performs manual labour.
- 2 a member of a ship's crew who performs manual labor wordnet
- 3 A stagehand.
"Sometimes actors set props on the spikes, or sometimes a deckhand will do it, depending on the action of the play."
Verb
- 1 To work on a boat as a deckhand; crew. intransitive
"You deckhand for Old Sam in the summer, you guide climbers up the Big Bump in the spring, you can skin a Cat, mine for gold, butcher a moose, fix an engine."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"He went to sea as a deckhand at the age of fourteen."
Etymology
From deck + hand.
Related phrases
More for "deckhand"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.