Flagman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual designated to manage traffic or vehicle movement with flags in order to ensure safety in various environments such as roads or railways
2. A person employed to oversee and control vehicular movement using flags in order to ensure safety and proper organization during transportation activities
3. Someone who directs vehicles or pedestrians using flags to maintain safe and orderly movement

Etymology: The word is about as transparent as English compounds get: "flag" combined with "-man," the old Germanic element for a person who does a particular job. A flagman is, quite literally, the man who handles the flag. The "flag" half is the older of the two, traceable back through Middle English and Old English, while "man" comes from the same Germanic stem that gave us words like "mannish" and "human" in its ancestral sense of a person. The real interest lies in what the flag is doing. Railway and road work depends on a signal that stops or warns traffic before the danger arrives, and a person waving a flag can do that where a fixed sign cannot. The word therefore names a role that existed long before anyone thought to automate it, and it survives mainly in contexts such as road works and rail sidings.

Synonyms: flagger, signalman, marker