landsman
Novice aboard ship
A landsman is someone unfamiliar with the sea or sailing—the opposite of a seaman.
The term appears in naval contexts for inexperienced crew members who haven't yet learned maritime skills: The captain put the landsmen to work scrubbing decks.
More broadly, landsman can mean simply a person who lives and works on land rather than at sea.
In Yiddish-influenced English, a landsman (plural landsleit) is a fellow countryman or someone from the same town or region in the old country: He met a landsman from his village in Poland.
sailor
Seafaring crew member
deck hand · able-bodied · rating · recruit · greenhorn · lubber · novice · apprentice · conscript · fresh water
- Yiddishchutzpah, kvetch, mensch, schlep, tchotchke
- AshkenaziYiddish, shtetl, klezmer, gefilte fish, challah
- countrymencompatriot, countrywoman, fellow citizen, national, native
- Jewish PeopleAshkenazi, Sephardi, Orthodox Jew, Conservative Jew, Reform Jew
- familymother, father, parents, siblings, parent