Tinman
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A maker of tinware; a tinsmith.
"He seemed to feel quite at home at the tinman's, although they were hammering and tapping away there all day, but people said that the gudewife put a dish of porridge up in the garret for him every Thursday evening; and it's no wonder that they got on well and became rich when they had a brownie in the house."
- 2 An uncaring or heartless man; a man lacking, or seeming to lack, feelings, emotions, or concern for others.
- 3 A dealer in tinware.
- 4 A master gene in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, whose absence causes the fly to develop without a heart.
"Tinman belongs to a special class of genes. [...] But some genes make proteins that control other genes. Some act like master switches, triggering many different genes to work together to build a structure. Tinman is one such “master gene” for the fruit fly."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"He seemed to feel quite at home at the tinman's, although they were hammering and tapping away there all day, but people said that the gudewife put a dish of porridge up in the garret for him every Thursday evening; and it's no wonder that they got on well and became rich when they had a brownie in the house."
Etymology
From tin + -man.
In allusion to the character Tin Man from the Land of Oz, who lacked a heart.
Related phrases
More for "tinman"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.