Other forms: workmen
A workman is a man employed to do manual work. On a site, in a road, or in your house with the floor up.
The word is dated for exactly the reason you would expect, since the job is not restricted to men, and worker, workmen and workers appear on signs in a slightly confused mixture. Workmanship survives with no such difficulty and means the quality of the making. There is a well-known proverb about excuses, since a bad workman blames his tools, which has been said to apprentices for centuries.
1nounworkmanA man employed to do manual or skilled physical work.
“Two workmen were digging up the pavement.”
Middle English
werkman
English, today
workman
From Middle English werkman. From Middle English werkman, from Old English weorcmann (“workman”), from Proto-West Germanic werkamann, from Proto-Germanic werkamann- (“workman”), equivalent to work + man. Compare Dutch werkman (“workman”), German Werkmann (“labourer, workman”), Icelandic verkamaður (“workman”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA