corner man
- noun
- Archaic
:
hombre de esquina
- Told me he used to be Joe Frazier's corner man.
Examples
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You're the best corner man.
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He's the corner man, asshole!
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You're my corner man.
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During the performance, the corner man exchanged witty remarks with the interlocutor, making the audience laugh.
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In traditional minstrel shows, the corner man engaged the crowd with his humorous dialogue.
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The corner man delivered clever one-liners that kept the audience entertained throughout the show.
Synonyms
5
3.7
A man who makes people laugh by telling jokes or acting in a silly way
A performer at one end of a line in an old minstrel show who speaks and makes people laugh
Surface Forms
Morphology
A B1 learner who knows 'corner' and 'man' can readily infer the literal sense 'a man at the corner' from the constituents, so part of the meaning is compositional. However, the specific historical/minstrel-show role (a performer at one end who engages in humorous dialogue) is culture-bound and not predictable from the words alone, so the expression is only partially transparent and requires prior exposure.
Etymology
The noun corner man comes from old minstrel shows, where a performer sat at one end—the corner—and answered and joked with the show's leader. Because he sat in that place and did most of the joking, the man in the corner came to mean 'a performer who joked from the end of the line'.