Word.ws English Dictionary

manefaire

UK/ˈmeɪnfɛə/US/ˈmeɪnfɛəɹ/

manefaire noun: protective armor for a horse's neck; a crinet or criniere.

Noun

manefaire (plural manefaires)

  1. (possibly erroneous) Protective armor for a horse's neck; a crinet or criniere.
    • The Criniere or Manefaire consisted of a number of small plates, generally about twelve, hooked together and to the chanfron, so as to be moveable, their use was to guard the neck of the horse from the stroke of a cutting sword.1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 30
    • The horse of a knight […] has a large criniere of mail pendant from the manefaire. […] The knight who carries the standard of Kybourgh has a manefaire on his horse of little plates rivetted on cloth, with a criniere below, and the bearer of the flag of Reineck, a poitrel on his horse, […]1842, S.R. Meyrick, A Critical Inquiry Into Antient Armour, as it Existed in Europe, Particularly in Great Britain, from the Norman Conquest to the Reign of King Charles II: Ill. by a Series of...

Forms of manefaire

pluralmanefaires
alternative formmainfaire

Origin of manefaire

From Middle English mayndefer, maynfer, and maynefere, attested in lists of armor used by men and their horses. In the 17- and 1800s, Francis Grose, Samuel Rush Meyrick and other antiquarians took the term to denote a horse's neck armor, connecting it to mane; Harold Dillon, 17th Viscount Dillon and Charles John ffoulkes have argued that this is an error and that term referred to a kind of gauntlet, from French main de fer (literally “hand of iron”), now often spelled manifer.

Questions about manefaire

What does manefaire mean?
Manefaire means protective armor for a horse's neck; a crinet or criniere.
What part of speech is manefaire?
Manefaire is a noun.
How do you pronounce manefaire?
Manefaire is pronounced /ˈmeɪnfɛə/ (UK).
What is the plural of manefaire?
The plural of manefaire is manefaires.

Words near manefaire in the dictionary

  1. maned rats
  2. maned wolf
  3. maned wolves
  4. maneen
  5. maneens
  6. manefaire
  7. manefaires
  8. manefish
  9. manefishes
  10. manege
  11. maneges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: manefaire (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “manefaire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/manefaire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.