Fireman

//ˈfaɪɹmən// name, noun

name, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone (especially one who is male) who is skilled in the work of fighting fire.

    "By February 1944 there were over two thousand women employed at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company [...]. There were also female firemen on almost every shipyard crane [...]."

  2. 2
    play in which children pretend to put out a fire wordnet
  3. 3
    A person (originally a man) who keeps the fire going underneath a steam boiler (originally, shoveling coal by hand), particularly on a railroad locomotive or steamship.

    "He looked around his cab at his black greasy fireman, saying 'shovel on a little more coal, and when we cross that White Oak Mountain, you can watch Old 97 roll'."

  4. 4
    a male member of a fire department who tries to extinguish fires wordnet
  5. 5
    An assistant on any locomotive, whether steam-powered or not. broadly
Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    a male pitcher who does not start the game wordnet
  2. 7
    A relief pitcher (reflecting the figurative analogy of rescuing the situation).
  3. 8
    a male laborer who tends fires (as on a coal-fired train or steamship) wordnet
  4. 9
    A safety inspector in coal mines. historical
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Example

More examples

"The brave fireman rescued a boy from the burning house."

Etymology

From fire + -man.

Related phrases

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