"point man" meaning in English

See point man in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-point man.ogg [Australia] Forms: point men [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|point men}} point man (plural point men)
  1. (military) In combat, the soldier who takes point; the soldier who assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation; the lead soldier/unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory. Categories (topical): Military Hypernyms: point person Related terms: take point
    Sense id: en-point_man-en-noun-F9ZJD2Ni Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 63 37 Topics: government, military, politics, war
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) A most trusted assistant or associate; the person upon whom one would most rely. Tags: broadly, idiomatic Synonyms: right-hand man
    Sense id: en-point_man-en-noun-fyPrfzvy

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for point man meaning in English (2.7kB)

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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013 February 11, Phil Bronstein, “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is Screwed”, in Esquire Magazine",
          "text": "The point man is the only one besides the Shooter who could verify the kill shots firsthand, and he did just that to another SEAL I spoke with.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In combat, the soldier who takes point; the soldier who assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation; the lead soldier/unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "73 27",
          "word": "point person"
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      "id": "en-point_man-en-noun-F9ZJD2Ni",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(military) In combat, the soldier who takes point; the soldier who assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation; the lead soldier/unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "73 27",
          "word": "take point"
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      ],
      "topics": [
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    },
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        {
          "ref": "2005 March 2, Leslie Feinberg, “Even McCarthy was gay baited”, in Workers World",
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          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "A most trusted assistant or associate; the person upon whom one would most rely."
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      "id": "en-point_man-en-noun-fyPrfzvy",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) A most trusted assistant or associate; the person upon whom one would most rely."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "right-hand man"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013 February 11, Phil Bronstein, “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is Screwed”, in Esquire Magazine",
          "text": "The point man is the only one besides the Shooter who could verify the kill shots firsthand, and he did just that to another SEAL I spoke with.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In combat, the soldier who takes point; the soldier who assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation; the lead soldier/unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory."
      ],
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          "military",
          "military"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(military) In combat, the soldier who takes point; the soldier who assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation; the lead soldier/unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "military",
        "politics",
        "war"
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          "ref": "2005 March 2, Leslie Feinberg, “Even McCarthy was gay baited”, in Workers World",
          "text": "McCarthy made a name for himself as a point man for a far right-wing current that attacked the Truman administration for the \"loss\" of China.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A most trusted assistant or associate; the person upon whom one would most rely."
      ],
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        [
          "trusted",
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        ],
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          "assistant",
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        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) A most trusted assistant or associate; the person upon whom one would most rely."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
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      "tags": [
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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.