HIGHWAYMAN

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does highwayman mean? 

• HIGHWAYMAN (noun)
  The noun HIGHWAYMAN has 1 sense:

1. a holdup man who stops a vehicle and steals from it

  Familiarity information: HIGHWAYMAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HIGHWAYMAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A holdup man who stops a vehicle and steals from it

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

highjacker; highwayman; hijacker; road agent

Hypernyms ("highwayman" is a kind of...):

holdup man; stickup man (an armed thief)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "highwayman"):

footpad; padder (a highwayman who robs on foot)

Instance hyponyms:

Dick Turpin; Turpin (English highwayman (1706-1739))

 Context examples 

The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

"Do you know," said she, "that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out-and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his minion; I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)