handman
noun
handman is a noun meaning “One who assembles printing type by hand” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-A-N-D-M-A-N, and it appears about once in every 42 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of handman is handmen.
What does handman mean?
noun
- 1
archaicrareA (male) servant; manservant
- 2
One who assembles printing type by hand.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of handman
- handmen plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is handman?
Handman appears about once in every 42 million words in written English, the 199,120th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does handman come from?
From hand + man, modelled after handmaiden, etc. For the printing sense, see by hand.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).