bench warmer

1. 1.

   (sports) a substitute who seldom plays

   Broadersubstitute

   sport

Questions about bench warmer

What does bench warmer mean?

bench warmer means "(sports) a substitute who seldom plays".

Is bench warmer a common word?

bench warmer is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.