Fireman
Fireman turns up in 2 fields: boilers, fire & safety. Here is what it means to the people in each one.
Fireman in boilers
The traditional title for a boiler operator who tends fires, watches water and keeps steam up.
Fireman is the boiler room title for the person who tends the fire, watches the water and keeps steam up, and it appears in shop talk and in some license names, such as First and Second Class Fireman in Massachusetts. Calling someone a fireman marks the job as hands-on: logs, blowdowns, glass checks and burner troubles, not paperwork.
"Fireman on nights logged the glass, the TDS and two blowdowns, so I trust that low-water trip was real."
Fireman in fire & safety
A traditional occupational title for a person trained to extinguish fires and perform rescues.
A person trained to extinguish fires, perform rescues, and mitigate hazardous materials incidents. While the term was historically the standard job title, most agencies use the gender-neutral term firefighter. In some departments, it specifically refers to the rank of a non-officer riding the apparatus, or historically, the person who stoked the boiler on a steam fire engine.
"The captain ordered the senior fireman to pull the cross-lay and make entry."