 "to furnish [a fortress or a ship] with a company of men") dates to early Middle English.The word has been applied generally as a suffix in modern combinations like "fireman", "policeman" and "mailman".With social changes in the later 20th century, new gender-neutral terms were coined, such as "firefighter", "police officer" and "mail carrier", to redress the gender-specific connotations of occupational names.