Origin: as. Mann, man, monn, mon; akin to os, D, & OHG. Man, g. Mann, Icel. Mathr, for mannr, dan. Mand, Sw. Man, goth. Manna, Skr. Manu, manus, and perh. To Skr. Man to think, and E. Mind. Cf. Minx a pert girl.
1. A human being; opposed tobeast. These men went about wide, and man found they none, but fair country, and wild beast many [a] one. (R. Of Glouc) The king is but a man, as i am; the violet smells to him as it doth to me. (Shak)
2. Especially: An adult male person; a grown-up male person, as distinguished from a woman or a child. When i became a man, i put away childish things. (i cor. Xiii. 11) Ceneus, a woman once, and once a man. (Dryden)
5. One possessing in a high degree the distinctive qualities of manhood; one having manly excellence of any kind. This was the noblest roman of them all . . . The elements So mixed in him that nature might stand up And say to all the world This was a man! (Shak)
6. An adult male servant; also, a vassal; a subject. Like master, like man. (old Proverb) The vassal, or tenant, kneeling, ungirt, uncovered, and holding up his hands between those of his lord, professed that he did become his man from that day forth, of life, limb, and earthly honor. (Blackstone)
9. One, or any one, indefinitely; a modified survival of the saxon use of man, or mon, as an indefinite pronoun. A man can not make him laugh. (Shak) A man would expect to find some antiquities; but all they have to show of this nature is an old rostrum of a roman ship. (Addison)
man is often used as a prefix in composition, or as a separate adjective, its sense being usually self-explaining; as, man child, man eater or maneater, man-eating, man hater or manhater, man-hating, manhunter, man-hunting, mankiller, man-killing, man midwife, man pleaser, man servant, man-shaped, manslayer, manstealer, man-stealing, manthief, man worship, etc. Man is also used as a suffix to denote a person of the male sex having a business which pertains to the thing spoken of in the qualifying part of the compound; ashman, butterman, laundryman, lumberman, milkman, fireman, showman, waterman, woodman. Where the combination is not familiar, or where some specific meaning of the compound is to be avoided, man is used as a separate substantive in the foregoing sense; as, apple man, cloth man, coal man, hardware man, wood man (as distinguished from woodman).
shaft and an equal number of shelves on a vertical rod which has an up and down motion equal to the distance between the successive landings. A man steps from a landing to a shelf and is lifted or lowered to the next landing, upon which he them steps, and so on, traveling by successive stages. Man Friday, a person wholly subservient to the will of another, like Robinson Crusoe's servant Friday. Man of straw, a puppet; one who is controlled by others; also, one who is not responsible pecuniarily.