Word.ws English Dictionary

mannishness

mannishness noun: the condition of being mannish; manliness or masculinity.

Noun

mannishness (uncountable)

  1. The condition of being mannish; manliness or masculinity.
    • She thinks also that when once the first ardor of revolution, with its inevitable tendency to mannishness, has passed by, women who work need lose none of their proper grace and charm—a view which is certainly borne out by facts.1903, Mabel Atkinson, Review of Lily Braun, Die Frauenfrage: ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Seite in American Journal of Sociology, 1 March, 1903, p. 703
    • I hate women in stiff collars and shirts and ties and mannishness like that […]1922, A. S. M. Hutchinson, This Freedom, Part Two, Chapter 2
  2. (Caribbean) Impertinence; precociousness.
    • Chinta came straight up to him and said, with the mannishness she put on when Mrs Tulsi was away, ‘Brother-in-law, I want you to know that until you came to this house there were no crab-catchers here.’1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part One, Chapter 5

Origin of mannishness

From mannish + -ness.

Questions about mannishness

What does mannishness mean?
Mannishness means the condition of being mannish; manliness or masculinity.
What part of speech is mannishness?
Mannishness is a noun.

Words near mannishness in the dictionary

  1. Manninos
  2. Mannion
  3. mannish
  4. mannish water
  5. mannishly
  6. mannishness
  7. mannitan
  8. mannitate
  9. mannitates
  10. mannite
  11. mannitic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mannishness (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.

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