"company man" meaning in English

See company man in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-company man.ogg [Australia] Forms: company men [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|company men}} company man (plural company men)
  1. A male employee who has a great—and often, in the view of others, an excessive—commitment to serving the interests of the organization which employs him. Synonyms: organization man, suit, yes man
    Sense id: en-company_man-en-noun-R3-wE99M Categories (other): English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 61 38 1 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 51 48 1
  2. A spy or other operative of an intelligence service, especially the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency. Categories (topical): People
    Sense id: en-company_man-en-noun-GTekRm6A Disambiguation of People: 37 63 0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 43 56 1 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 51 48 1
  3. A male homosexual.
    Sense id: en-company_man-en-noun-C1Za5CsT

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for company man meaning in English (4.2kB)

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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "company men",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1957 Feb. 16, Ralph Bernstein (AP), \"Bell ‘Savior’ of Pro Football,\" Spokesman-Review (USA), p. 58 (retrieved 12 July 2012)",
          "text": "[B]oth sides accuse him of favoring the other. Certain players have accused him of being a company man."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1981, Donald Alan Messerschmidt, Anthropologists at Home in North America, page 226",
          "text": "What was expected of men, it seemed, was to be a company man. Foster (1969:156) refers to this as the assumption that \"achievement of organizational goals represents the highest value.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997 August 21, James Sterngold, “Leo Jaffe, Hollywood Deal Maker, Dies at 88”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-12",
          "text": "He was an old-fashioned company man. He lived and breathed Columbia Pictures.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 September 26, Richard Corliss, “John Ford at Fox”, in Time",
          "text": "Like virtually every other director in the '30s and '40s, Ford was obliged to be a company man, rankling under his boss's gaze.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A male employee who has a great—and often, in the view of others, an excessive—commitment to serving the interests of the organization which employs him."
      ],
      "id": "en-company_man-en-noun-R3-wE99M",
      "links": [
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        ],
        [
          "excessive",
          "excessive"
        ],
        [
          "commitment",
          "commitment"
        ],
        [
          "serving",
          "serve"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "organization man"
        },
        {
          "word": "suit"
        },
        {
          "word": "yes man"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
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          "parents": [
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      ],
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        {
          "ref": "1990 November 20, Michael Wines, “Washington at Work: After 30 Years in Shadows, a Spymaster Emerges”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-13",
          "text": "But many say he nevertheless is more in the mold of the quiet, no-questions-asked company men who built the C.I.A. in the 1960's and 70's and ran it in the 80's.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 November 24, James Luxford, “REVIEW: Body Of Lies”, in entertainmentwise.com, retrieved 2012-07-13",
          "text": "Body of Lies is set in the grim and violent world of Middle East counter-terrorism. Roger Ferris (DiCaprio) is the CIA’s man on the front line. . . . His every move is instructed and monitored by his boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), a fast-talking and amoral company man running the war on terrorism via satellite.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A spy or other operative of an intelligence service, especially the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency."
      ],
      "id": "en-company_man-en-noun-GTekRm6A",
      "links": [
        [
          "spy",
          "spy"
        ],
        [
          "operative",
          "operative"
        ],
        [
          "intelligence",
          "intelligence"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A male homosexual."
      ],
      "id": "en-company_man-en-noun-C1Za5CsT",
      "links": [
        [
          "homosexual",
          "homosexual"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-company man.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/6f/En-au-company_man.ogg/En-au-company_man.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/En-au-company_man.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "word": "company man"
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{
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    "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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        {
          "ref": "1957 Feb. 16, Ralph Bernstein (AP), \"Bell ‘Savior’ of Pro Football,\" Spokesman-Review (USA), p. 58 (retrieved 12 July 2012)",
          "text": "[B]oth sides accuse him of favoring the other. Certain players have accused him of being a company man."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1981, Donald Alan Messerschmidt, Anthropologists at Home in North America, page 226",
          "text": "What was expected of men, it seemed, was to be a company man. Foster (1969:156) refers to this as the assumption that \"achievement of organizational goals represents the highest value.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997 August 21, James Sterngold, “Leo Jaffe, Hollywood Deal Maker, Dies at 88”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-12",
          "text": "He was an old-fashioned company man. He lived and breathed Columbia Pictures.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 September 26, Richard Corliss, “John Ford at Fox”, in Time",
          "text": "Like virtually every other director in the '30s and '40s, Ford was obliged to be a company man, rankling under his boss's gaze.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A male employee who has a great—and often, in the view of others, an excessive—commitment to serving the interests of the organization which employs him."
      ],
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          "employee",
          "employee"
        ],
        [
          "excessive",
          "excessive"
        ],
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          "commitment",
          "commitment"
        ],
        [
          "serving",
          "serve"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "organization man"
        },
        {
          "word": "suit"
        },
        {
          "word": "yes man"
        }
      ]
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        {
          "ref": "1990 November 20, Michael Wines, “Washington at Work: After 30 Years in Shadows, a Spymaster Emerges”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-13",
          "text": "But many say he nevertheless is more in the mold of the quiet, no-questions-asked company men who built the C.I.A. in the 1960's and 70's and ran it in the 80's.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 November 24, James Luxford, “REVIEW: Body Of Lies”, in entertainmentwise.com, retrieved 2012-07-13",
          "text": "Body of Lies is set in the grim and violent world of Middle East counter-terrorism. Roger Ferris (DiCaprio) is the CIA’s man on the front line. . . . His every move is instructed and monitored by his boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), a fast-talking and amoral company man running the war on terrorism via satellite.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A spy or other operative of an intelligence service, especially the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency."
      ],
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      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A male homosexual."
      ],
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        ]
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/En-au-company_man.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "company man"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.