Definition of "minuteman" [min•ute•man]

• An armed man pledged to be ready to fight on a minute's notice just before and during the Revolutionary War in the United States. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Or to put the point more piquantly, one person's minuteman is another person's mujahideen."
• "The American hero is the cowboy: He is Maverick, he is Han Solo, he is Batman though, when Batman is in trouble, he turns on the Jack Bauer signal, he is the rag-tag minuteman fighting the well-trained Lobsterbacks."
• "Mitchell (Sonny) English is a "minuteman" for the Illinois Department of Transportation, who considers his 9 p. m.-to-5 a.m. tour "the best shift going.""