Runman

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A deserter from a ship of war. historical

    "The problem became so acute that the American ships moved across the bay to Algeziras because the English commanders "have treated us with great indignity and protected runmen, or deserters and refused to give them up and anchored so close as a further inducement for them to swim to the English ships.""

Example

More examples

"The problem became so acute that the American ships moved across the bay to Algeziras because the English commanders "have treated us with great indignity and protected runmen, or deserters and refused to give them up and anchored so close as a further inducement for them to swim to the English ships.""

Etymology

From run + -man.

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