manliness

Noun

manliness (usually uncountable, plural manlinesses)

1. (usually) The quality of being manly; the set of qualities, traits and abilities considered appropriate to men (as opposed to women or children); similarity to a man.
   • Nought under Heaven so strongly doth allure
     The Sense of Man, and all his Mind possess,
     As Beauty’s lovely Bait, that doth procure
     Great Warriors oft their Rigour to repress;
     And mighty Hands forget their Manliness,1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 1
   • With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
     And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose;
     And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
     And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
     Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
     In all the silent manliness of grief.1770, Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, lines 379–384

   Synonyms:

   virility, masculinity, manfulness, mannishness, maleness

   Antonyms:

   unmanliness, womanliness

2. (euphemistic, rare, usually) Male genitals.
   • Dressed only in flip-flops and a fuzzy blue bathrobe, which would be long enough on the mayor of Munchkin Land but on me is literally indecent, I attack the mower in a yanking frenzy, flailing around until the dramatic conclusion, wherein the mower refuses to start even though it is confronted by...2013 May 28, Doug Speirs, “Why you shouldn’t call me Mr. Fix It”, in Winnipeg Free Press

   Synonyms:

   manhood

3. (rare, usually) Humanity, the quality of being human.
   • What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and...1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Story Begins”, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 48