man

  • noun (pl. men) 1 an adult human male. 2 a male member of a workforce, team, etc. 3 a husband or lover. 4 a person. 5 human beings in general. 6 a figure or token used in a board game.

  • verb (manned, manning) provide (a place or machine) with the personnel to run, operate, or defend it.

  • exclamation informal, chiefly N. Amer. used for emphasis or to express surprise, admiration, or delight.

  — PHRASES every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost proverb everyone should (or does) look after their own interests rather than considering those of others. man about town a fashionable and sociable man. man and boy from childhood. the man in the street the average man. man of the cloth a clergyman. man of God a clergyman. man of letters a male scholar or author. man of straw (also straw man) 1 a person who is a sham. 2 a person undertaking a financial commitment without adequate means. to a man without exception.

  — USAGE Traditionally the word man has been used to refer not only to adult males but also to human beings in general. There is a historical explanation for this: in Old English the principal sense of man was ‘a human being’, and the words wer and wif were used to refer specifically to ‘a male person’ and ‘a female person’ respectively. Subsequently, man replaced wer as the normal term for ‘a male person’, but at the same time the older sense ‘a human being’ remained in use. The generic use of man to refer to ‘human beings in general’ is now widely regarded as old-fashioned or sexist. Acceptable alternatives include the the human race or humankind.

  — ORIGIN Old English.

Perform another search of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary

About this dictionary
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English contains 145,000 words, phrases, and definitions.
Find out more about Oxford's range of English dictionaries
Sign up for the AskOxford Word of the Day

Search the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Search the Concise Dictionary of First Names