fugleman
/ˈfjuːɡ(ə)lmən
/noun (plural fuglemen) historical
1A soldier who stands in front of a regiment or company to demonstrate and maintain time in drilling exercises.The boat-songs were to give time to the paddlers in canoes, and were sung by directors or fuglemen of whom there were two in each large war-canoe, one near the bow and the other near the stern....
- The manufactured praise accompanying Grohl, supplied by a corps of pro fuglemen who lead and escort the illustrious on his vanity venture, is grand.
- The words of a haka are either sung by all the performers, or, in some cases, the fugleman leads off for a line or two and the others join in as a kind of chorus, as we have shown.
1.1A leader, organizer, or spokesman: fuglemen of the ideological right...
- A good deal of nonsense about the obsolescence of art is written by the less responsible fuglemen of science - communist science, bien entendu.
- This is a question which, of course, nobody could answer, and which, in fact, the fuglemen of ‘affirmative action’ were, and still are, very unwilling to have asked in public.
Origin
Early 19th century: from German Flügelmann 'leader of the file', from Flügel 'wing' + Mann 'man'.