end-mann.
1. A man at an end of a line or row; spec. (U.S.) a man at the end of a line of blackface minstrels who engaged in comic repartee with the interlocutor; = corner-man n. 1.
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society > leisure > the arts > music > musician > [noun] > black minstrel
nigger minstrel1844
Negro minstrel1853
end-man1865
corner-man1874
1865 G. A. Sala My Diary in Amer. II. 395 He propounded conundrums to his brother ‘end man’ who played the banjo.
1884 Sat. Rev. 7 June 740/1 At the ends are Bones and Tambo, the ‘end-men’.
1886 Harper's Mag. Nov. 837/1 Binns..sang..appearing to Roxy as he sang as delightful a personage as an end man.
1889 Cent. Dict. (at cited word) In the early days of negro minstrelsy each troupe had two end-men... The larger troupes have since had two, and sometimes four, of each class of end-men.
1909 T. C. de Leon Beaux, Belles & Brains of 60's xxxi. 356 Emmett was the star of Birch and Backus, as endman.
1956 M. W. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) xi. 116 The usual half circle of players with the end-men and interlocutor cracking jokes and doing their various specialties.
2. A person who holds advanced views; an extremist.
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1884 Science 8 Aug. 113/1 A very long series of resolutions, expressing the sentiments of a few end men on most of the open questions in the broad sphere of modern life, were approved.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1933; most recently modified version published online March 2021).
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end-man
end-man n.
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n.1865as lemmas