remittance man
noun
Simple meaning
An unwanted or underachieving man, or occasionally a youngest son, sent by relatives to a distant land and sent regular remittances of upkeep money.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
reemituhnsmanSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɹiˈmɪtənsˈmæn
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
historical
An unwanted or underachieving man, or occasionally a youngest son, sent by relatives to a distant land (often from Britain to a colony) and sent regular remittances of upkeep money, in order that he does not come back.
historical
An exile living on money sent from home
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: An unwanted or underachieving man, or occasionally a youngest son, sent by relatives to a distant land (often from Britain to a colony) and sent regular remittances of upkeep money, in order that he does not come back.
Used this way, remittance man is an older-sounding word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It turns up most in historical writing and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Dated
- Connotation
- Old-fashioned
- Usage feel
- Dated in modern speech
Where it naturally appears
- Historical writing
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
This meaning still makes sense to most readers, but it sounds a generation behind current usage.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.