Laundrymen

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Men employed to wash, dry and press clothing and linens in a commercial laundry
2. Male workers whose job is cleaning and ironing garments and household fabrics for others
3. Those men who operate laundering machinery and handle the washing of soiled textiles for customers

Etymology: "Laundrymen" is the plural of "laundryman," a compound of "laundry" and "man." The first part traces back through Old French "lavanderie" to Latin "lavare," meaning "to wash," and before that to Proto-Indo-European roots for washing. Latin "lavandaria," the washing-place, passed into Middle English as "lavendrie," which over time was reshaped into the modern "laundry," a word that first named the place where clothes were washed before it came to mean the clothes themselves. The second part, "man," is an ancient Germanic word for a human being, present in Old English as "mann." In "laundryman," it simply marks a male worker, so the compound describes a man whose job is washing clothes. The plural "laundrymen" follows the regular pattern for compounds ending in "man," changing "man" to "men" just as "postman" becomes "postmen."

Synonyms: launderer