man of action
11
4.2
- noun
:
hombre de acción
- As a firefighter, he is known as a man of action who responds quickly to emergencies.
He was a man of action, he was all of these things.
- He was a man of action, he was all of these things.
- Doctor Brown said my father lived up to Bergsen's challenge to the young to think like men of action and act like men of thought.
- He thinks about these matters even though he is a, you know, definitely man of action.
Examples
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Jefferson was a change agent, a man of action and a perfectionist.
Blog text (10) -
I'm a man of action.
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Born to be a man of action.
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What need has a man of action for words?
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You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought.
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I am a man of action.
Academic text (2016) -
There are two kinds of people in this world, men of action and everyone else.
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Polo was a man of action, and he never looked back.
Fiction book (1995) -
You're a man of action.
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Yet if King was principally a man of action, his actions are for the most part lost to us.
Academic text (2003)
Synonyms
1
9.0
A person who acts boldly and makes things happen
A person who acts to solve problems rather than talk about them
A person who starts tasks and gets things done
Antonyms
How Action-Oriented
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'man' (adult male) + 'of' (linking) + 'action' (taking practical steps) yields a man characterized by action, so a learner who knows the constituents can infer 'a person who acts decisively'. The 'X of Y' descriptive pattern is common across languages and standard in English noun phrases, making the expression immediately understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The phrase man of action may come from the simple picture of a man stepping forward and doing things with action instead of just talking. So, it means 'a man who acts quickly and directly instead of spending much time planning'.