What does "defenceman" mean?

In ice hockey and lacrosse, a player position with a primary responsibility to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals; same as defender in many other ballgames.

Defenceman

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
In ice hockey and lacrosse, a player position with a primary responsibility to prevent the opposing team from scoring goals; same as defender in many other ballgames.

Etymology

From defence + -man.

Related phrases

ice hockey

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.