stunt woman

1 4.1

A woman who performs dangerous actions instead of an actor in movies or on TV

noun
/stʌnt ˈwʊmən/

: doble de acción

In the film, the stunt woman executed a breathtaking fall that left the audience in awe.

Unfortunately, I had brilliant stunt women like Zoe Bell, who's a dear friend, and my girlfriend Dana, who's just blanking on her last name.

Examples

Kristina is a skilled stunt woman who often performs dangerous acrobatics for action movies.
She was Uma's stunt woman in much of Kill Bill one and two.
Unfortunately, I had brilliant stunt women like Zoe Bell, who's a dear friend, and my girlfriend Dana, who's just blanking on her last name.

Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum
As a stunt woman, she had to train extensively to perform all the intense fight scenes safely.

Surface Forms

stunt woman singular

stunt women plural

Morphology

stunt + woman

The meaning 'a woman who performs stunts' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'stunt' (a dangerous or unusual act) with 'woman' (an adult female); the first noun modifies the second in a regular compound-noun pattern. This compositional structure is common cross-linguistically and follows standard English noun-noun formation, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Stunt woman comes from stunt, a word for a daring trick in shows, and woman, a female performer. The image is of a woman doing the dangerous trick so the actor does not have to, so a stunt woman is 'a female substitute who performs dangerous actions' in films.