Nightman

Quick meaning: Nightman is a noun meaning A nightwatchman; a guard who works at night.

Meaning

A nightwatchman; a guard who works at night.

More Meanings

1. (historical) A person whose job is cleaning cesspools or sewers, or emptying privies by night.
2. (dated) A male night shift worker.

Example Sentences

Near-synonym: shit-carter

Doorman John Healy comes to work Sunday morning bringing a partly finished bottle of whiskey. He greets his colleague, George Tiernan, nightman, with the suggestion that they “kill the quart” before Mr. Tiernan goes home.

1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt (etc.), p. 54, That the Laystalls be removed as far as may be out of the City, and common Passages, and that no Nightman or other be suffered to empty a Vault into any Garden near about the City.

1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London: G. Woodfall & Son, Volume II, The Street-Folk, p. 193, I have met with nightmen who have told me that there was “nothing particular” in the smell of the cesspools they were emptying; they “hardly perceived it.” One man said, “Why, it’s like the sort of stuff I’ve smelt in them ladies’ smelling-bottles.”

Word Forms

• nightmen
• night-man
• night man

Synonyms for nightman

Depending on context, synonyms include shit-carter.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include night-man, dirtman, all-night-man, binman, potman, garbageperson.

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