point man

noun

the lead soldier of an infantry patrol on combat operations.

a person who serves in the forefront, as of an economic or political issue.

Origin:
1900–05, Americanism

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source

Collins

World English Dictionary

point man

—n
1.	military a soldier who walks at the front of an infantry patrol in combat
2.	the leader or spokesperson of a campaign or organization

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

00:10

Point man is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

point man

"one who leads a military patrol in formation in a jungle, etc.," 1944, from point (n.) in military sense of "small leading party of an advance guard" (1589).

Slang Dictionary

point man definition

n.
a ballplayer who habitually scores points. : Fred is supposed to be point man for our team, but tonight he is not doing so well.
n.
anyone whose job it is to score successes against the opposition. : The president expects the secretary of defense to be point man for this new legislation.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

Matching Quote

"Hebraism contains no eternal realm of essence, which Greek philosophy was to fabricate, through Plato, as affording the intellectual deliverance from the evil of time. Such a realm of eternal essences is possible only for a detached intellect, one who, in Plato's phrase, becomes a "spectator of all time and all existence." This ideal of the philosopher as the highest human type—the theoretical intellect who from the vantage point of eternity can survey all time and existence—is altogether foreign to the Hebraic concept of the man of faith who is passionately committed to his own mortal being. Detachment was for the Hebrew an impermissible state of mind, a vice rather than a virtue; or rather it was something that Biblical man was not yet even able to conceive, since he had not reached the level of rational abstraction of the Greek. His existence was too earth-bound, too laden with oppressive images of mortality, to permit him to experience the philosopher's detachment."

-William Barrett

Upgrade to Ad-free Premium Membership!