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stunt man

stunt man

1 3.5
A man who performs dangerous actions for actors in films or on television
  • noun
  • /stʌnt mæn/
translation icon : doble de acción
  • The stunt man performed an incredible jump from the building into the safety net below.

Examples

Synonyms

stuntman
vsstunt man
34 3.6

A person who does dangerous actions in films or shows to entertain people

is a hired male who performs such actions for actors in film or TV

How Reckless

speed demon
  • Informal
2 6.9
daredevil
26 6.1
stunt man
1 3.5
speeder
10 3.0
speedster
16 4.1

Surface Forms

stunt man singular
stunt men plural

Morphology

stunt + man

The meaning 'a man who performs dangerous or unusual acts' is directly and compositionally derived from 'stunt' (a dangerous/unusual act) + 'man' (an adult male) via a regular agent-noun compound pattern. This is a straightforward, cross-linguistically common morphological construction, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Stunt man comes from the word stunt, meaning a dangerous or skillful trick, and man, the person who does it. In early films and in the circus, people did these risky tricks instead of the actors, so stunt man came to mean 'a man who performs dangerous acts for actors'.