he-man

plural he-men · alternative misspelling heman

1. A strong or virile man.

   1970-1975, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure A lotta draggy party-type people there...girls all decked out & guys with he-man cologne on.

   2 more examples

   What's the matter with his talking so polite? Hell's bells, Harry, no harm in being polite. There's some regular he-men that are just as polite as women, prett' near.

   1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XXIX, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC, section V, page 352

   One of the better jokes arrives late into the movie, when Guy is forced to take on a brawny he-man doppelgänger—a planned addition to the game’s sequel—who the programmers haven’t finished scripting, and his unfinished dialogue is all placeholders.

   2021 August 6, A. A. Dowd, “The Ryan Reynolds action-comedy Free Guy is a Truman Show for the Fortnite age”, in The A.V. Club

   Synonyms: macho man