remittance man
- noun
- /rɪˈmɪtəns mæn/
- Offensive
:
mantenido
- He was thrown out, really bad blood in the family, and he became a remittance man in Nova Scotia, but he remained on the rolls of his home in Scotland and always thought of himself as a Scot.
Examples
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In Victorian England, a remittance man was often sent money by his family to avoid bringing embarrassment to the household.
-
Known as a remittance man, he relied on his family's regular money transfers while living abroad far from their expectations.
-
A generation ago, Ralph would have been called a remittance man.
Fiction book (1992) -
Ralph became a remittance man, receiving financial support from his family to stay away from home due to past troubles.
Synonyms
A person living abroad who receives regular money from their family back home
A woman who lives abroad and gets regular money from a family that did not accept her
Surface Forms
Morphology
The core sense — a man who is supported by regular payments sent from elsewhere — is directly derivable from 'remittance' (money sent) + 'man' and would be recognizable to a learner who knows both words. However, the expression carries historical and social nuance (living abroad, often because of disgrace or trouble at home) and is relatively rare/archedic, so the full pragmatic connotations are not fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
The term remittance man comes from families who sent a 'remittance', a regular payment, to keep a man living abroad. The image of a lonely man living far away on that money, often because his family wanted him away, explains why the term came to mean 'a man supported by payments from home, often seen as an embarrassing or unwanted relative'.
