tin man
1
4.6
- noun
- /tɪn mæn/
- Literature
:
hombre de hojalata
- The tin man traveled with Dorothy on her quest to meet the Wizard.
The Tin Man is the guy that reminds her he has to have a heart.
- The Tin Man is the guy that reminds her he has to have a heart.
- Well, I'm going to go off to the woods now and go searching for the Tin Man.
Examples
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Where's the tin man and the cowardly lion?
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Well, that's like Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Lion and the Scarecrow going to see the Fed.
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I feel like I look at the Tin Man searching for his brain or his heart.
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The Tin Man is the guy that reminds her he has to have a heart.
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Right now, the important part is what did the Tin Man say to Dorothy at the end of the movie when she was leaving?
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And he could talk too, like the scarecrow and the tin man?
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I figured, you know, Fisher Price, little people had a lineup of Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion and Dorothy for sure, right?
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In 'The Wizard of Oz', the tin man longs for a heart to feel emotions.
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Many fans admire the tin man for his quest for compassion and love.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'tin' names the material and 'man' denotes a (figurine or playing) figure, so 'tin man' straightforwardly means a man-shaped object made of tin. This material+object compounding is a common, cross-linguistic pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Tin man comes from The Wizard of Oz; he is literally a man made of tin who wants a real heart, so the story gives a clear image of a metal man who wishes 'to feel'.