lighterman

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical: a person who operates, owns, or works on a lighter, a flat-bottomed barge used to transfer cargo

   The lighterman steered the loaded barge away from the merchant ship.

Formed in the sixteenth century from lighter, a cargo barge, + man. The vessel name is associated with lightening a larger ship by taking cargo from it, so a lighterman was the worker who handled that transfer barge.

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