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yeoman

 - 4 dictionary results

yeo⋅man

  [yoh-muhn] noun, plural -men, adjective
Use yeoman in a Sentence
–noun
1. a petty officer in a navy, having chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy.
2. British. a farmer who cultivates his own land.
3. History/Historical. one of a class of lesser freeholders, below the gentry, who cultivated their own land, early admitted in England to political rights.
4. Archaic.
a. a servant, attendant, or subordinate official in a royal or other great household.
b. a subordinate or assistant, as of a sheriff or other official or in a craft or trade.
–adjective
5. of, pertaining to, composed of, or characteristic of yeomen: the yeoman class.
6. performed or rendered in a loyal, valiant, useful, or workmanlike manner, esp. in situations that involve a great deal of effort or labor: He did a yeoman job on the problem.
Origin:
1300–50; ME yeman, yoman, prob. reduced forms of yengman, yongman, yungman, with similar sense; see young, man 1
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To yeoman
yeo·man   (yō'mən)   
n.  

    1. An attendant, servant, or lesser official in a royal or noble household.

    2. A yeoman of the guard.

  2. A petty officer performing chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy.

  3. An assistant or other subordinate, as of a sheriff.

  4. A diligent, dependable worker.

  5. A farmer who cultivates his own land, especially a member of a former class of small freeholders in England.


[Middle English yoman, perhaps from Old English *gēaman, from Old Frisian gāman, villager : gā, region, district + man, man; see man-1 in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

yeoman 
c.1300, "attendant in a noble household," of unknown origin, perhaps a contraction of O.E. iunge man "young man," or from an unrecorded O.E. *geaman, equivalent of O.Fris. gaman "villager," from O.E. -gea "district, village," cognate with O.Fris. ga, ge, from P.Gmc. *gaujan. Sense of "commoner who cultivates his land" is recorded from 1411; also the third order of fighting men (1375, below knights and squires, above knaves), hence yeomen's service "good, efficient service" (1602). Meaning "naval petty officer in charge of supplies" is first attested 1669. Yeowoman first recorded 1852: "Then I am yeo-woman O the clumsy word!" [Tennyson, "The Foresters"]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Encyclopedia

yeoman

in English history, a class intermediate between the gentry and the labourers; a yeoman was usually a landholder but could also be a retainer, guard, attendant, or subordinate official. The word appears in Middle English as yemen, or yoman, and is perhaps a contraction of yeng man or yong man, meaning young man, or attendant. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (late 14th century) depicts a yeoman who is a forester and a retainer. Most yeomen of the later Middle Ages were probably occupied in cultivating the land; Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles (1577), described them as having free land worth 6 (originally 40 shillings) annually and as not being entitled to bear arms

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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