Other forms: tradesmen
A tradesman is a man who works at a skilled manual trade. A plumber, an electrician, a joiner, a bricklayer.
The skill is what separates a tradesman from a labourer, since a trade is learned through an apprenticeship. The word is becoming tradesperson in official use for the obvious reason, and trades is now commonly used as a plural noun on its own. Britain has a shortage of them, which is why the rates have risen so sharply. Tradesman's entrance is a phrase that dates a building.
1nountradesmanA person who works in a skilled manual trade.
“They had three tradesmen in the house all week.”
Old Saxon
trada
Middle Low German
trade
Middle English
trade
English
trade
English, today
tradesman
From trade + -s- + -man. trade comes from Middle English trade, from Middle Low German trade, from Old Saxon trada. From Middle English trade (“path, course of conduct”), introduced into English by Hanseatic merchants, from Middle Low German trade (“track, course”), from Old Saxon trada (“spoor, track”), from Proto-West Germanic tradu, from Proto-Germanic tradō (“track, way”), and cognate with Old English tredan (“to tread”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dreh₂- (“to tread, walk, step, run”). Cognate with Dutch trade, tra (“path, trail, course, trade”), German Low German Traad (“track, wagon trail”), lb Tratt (“step, pace”), Icelandic tröð (“a lane between fences, enclosure, pen”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA