Word.ws English Dictionary

manship

/ˈmænʃɪp/

manship noun: the characteristic of being a man; maleness; masculinity; manliness; manhood.

Noun

manship (uncountable)

  1. The characteristic of being a man; maleness; masculinity; manliness; manhood.
    • Every man is a man if he chooses to be, and has in himself all that he needs in order to be a man in the full significance of the term; and therefore no one has any occasion to borrow a part of his manship from his brother.1845, Orestes Augustus Brownson, Charles Elwood, page 161
    • He certainly had nothing to do with the choosing of his manship, any more than his sister had of her womanhood.1902, Lebbeus Harding Rogers, The Kite Trust (a Romance of Wealth), page 324
  2. (archaic) Position of honor or respect; dignity, worthiness
    • Ac fourti winter Madan mid mansipe held his riche.c1400, Cursor Mundi
  3. (archaic) Honor shown to a person; homage, respect; courtesy
    • For los and priis þou miᵹt þer winne & manschip to þe & al þi kinne.c1330, The Romance of Guy of Warwick
  4. (archaic, dialectal) Manly spirit or conduct; courage, valor, gallantry; chivalry
    • And how that ever ye do, hold up your manship.c1465, The Paston Letters
  5. (archaic) Human condition.
    • Bot he was ferliful to call if þou it sagh..þat in a man all manscip war.c1400, Cursor Mundi

Proper noun capitalized: Manship

Manship (plural Manships)

  1. A surname.

Examples of manship in a sentence

  • They were middle-class and, therefore, "had a better attitude towards girls because boys [in Washington Highlands] like beating girls to show their manship.2003, Leon Dash, When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of Teenage Childbearing, page 200:
  • The manship of Jesus was hid from the eyes of men as completely as the Godship.2007, Kevin P. Novak, Adam Versus Adam, page 69:

Forms of manship

pluralManships

Origin of manship

From Middle English manship (“position of honor; respect; courtesy; manly spirit or conduct; humanity; human condition”), from Old English mansċipe (“humanity, courtesy”), equivalent to man + -ship. Cognate with Dutch manschap (“homage, manred, crew”), German Mannschaft (“team, crew, squad, force”), Swedish manskap (“rank, crew”).

Questions about manship

What does manship mean?
Manship means the characteristic of being a man; maleness; masculinity; manliness; manhood.
How do you use manship in a sentence?
They were middle-class and, therefore, "had a better attitude towards girls because boys [in Washington Highlands] like beating girls to show their manship.
What part of speech is manship?
Manship can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce manship?
Manship is pronounced /ˈmænʃɪp/.

Words near manship in the dictionary

  1. mansformations
  2. manshake
  3. manshakes
  4. manshift
  5. manshifts
  6. manship
  7. manshiply
  8. Manships
  9. Mansi
  10. mansicle
  11. mansicles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: manship (page history and authors); Manship (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-manship.wav.

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