Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A turnpikeman.
  • noun A soldier armed with a pike; especially, about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a member of a regularly organized body of such soldiers.
  • noun A miner who works with a pike or crowbar.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A soldier armed with a pike.
  • noun A miner who works with a pick.
  • noun A keeper of a turnpike gate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A soldier armed with a pike.
  • noun A person who operates a turnpike.
  • noun A miner who works with a pick.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pike +‎ -man

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Examples

  • The word properly means a "pikeman" or "halberdier," of whom the bodyguard of kings and princes was composed.

    Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897

  • I wish soeone would find the cartoon where Conan is laughing because a pikeman falls on his own pike.

    Conan and the Penguin People! Cromsblood 2009

  • Though Mortlock is a pikeman, I studied fencing for years, and use my love of history to add as much realism to the arms, armour and conditions that make his fantasy setting as viable as possible.

    Mini-interview: Bruce Durham | 2009

  • Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeman has fastened to his own wrist, trots a bare-legged Irish kerne, whose only clothing is his ragged yellow mantle, and the unkempt

    Westward Ho! 2007

  • How did those experts, the cabman, and pikeman, and tradesman, come to find it out?

    Roundabout Papers 2006

  • Yet now he is dead, as dead as any ordinary pikeman who fought to hold back the Horde at the terminus of the Salmisti Bridge.

    Kingdoms of Light Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2001

  • He turns the gelding, using the short lance to knock aside a single pike, then aims it and dispatches the pikeman.

    Scion of Cyador Modesitt, L. E. 2000

  • He saw no imminent danger, looked back to the right, flicked the blade up into the pikeman's face, looked front again, then shoulder-charged the pikeman, driving him back so that he fell against a cannon and Sharpe could raise the cutlass and, with both hands, drive it down into the man's belly.

    Sharpe's Trafalgar Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- 2000

  • The aspens and the oaks, the cypress and the pines stood firm, like bold pikeman.

    Dragons of a Fallen Sun Weis, Margaret 2000

  • They lunged forward, hooking men with the crooked blade on the pike's reverse, then pulling their victims out of the Espiritu Santo's ranks so that another pikeman, using the weapon's broad axe-head, could slash down hard.

    Sharpe's Devil Cornwell, Bernard 1992

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