It's a Man's, Man's, Man's, Man's Word

Add man-novation to the growing lexicon of man-words. I spotted the coinage on page 32 of the May issue of Wired, in an article about "the dumbest, dude-liest schemes" ever filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office--you know, your pogo-copters, your helmet-mounted pistols, your fulcrum-activated penis exercisers. They could fill a book, and as it turns out, they do. (Manly innovation does not, however, appear to extend to book titles.)

Well, if there's one thing Wired ought to know, it's man-stuff. I counted only only five female names among the magazine's 32 contributing editors and one lone woman--Xeni Jardin--out of 18 correspondents listed on the masthead. I guess most women don't care about the "innovators, instigators, and investors who are changing the world." Heck, no! We just want our mani-pedis!

Hmmm ... mani. Now I remember why I came in this room. I've been tracking man-words ever since the topic came up, about a month ago, on the American Dialect Society's listserv. A correspondent wrote that he was "working on a possible article about the man-word trend" and asked for additions to his list, which included (I'm editing for brevity):

  man bag
  man cave
  man juice
  man laws
  man purse
  man-boobs
  mancation
  man-crush
  mandal
  man-date
  man-dress
  manfriend
  man-hug
  mankini
  man-loaf
  manmaries
  manorexia
  manscaping
  man-seed
  man-spat
  manties
  mantique
  manzillian (yes, a male Brazilian)
  murse

Well, that opened the floodgates. Over the next week my inbox bulged with testosteroneologisms like these from Michael Covarrubias:

man date: a planned outing - or perhaps an edict of "man law"
manzierre: we mustn't forget this and the "bro"
man-gina: unfortunately not referring to male chest-pain
manscara: popular with glams, goths and metros

And from other contributors:

man-skank, man-slut, man-whore

And:

man-handles, to mean a man's love handles

And the whole roster of man-smut (man muscle, man gristle, man butter, man chowder, man sugar--hey, hold the man-mayo!).

You can follow the whole thread here.

So the next time you hear someone saying, as pop linguists are wont to do, that men use fewer words than women, you have my permission to produce this list and loudly proclaim "Ha!"

Or to challenge him to a mano a mano.

Comments

[Amy]

Mantastic post!

My husband and his poker playing friends call the garage/ workshop/ extra building on our property Man-World. He just built a round table for them all to sit around.

[Michael Covarrubias]

A couple weeks ago I heard "manpeedo" for a speedo worn by a man. That one seems unnecessary since it's already men who typically get the attention for wearing a tiny speedo. It's like saying "mantoupee" or "manxedo".

Hey get this: I recognized some of the commentary that you quoted. I thought "where have I heard that before?" Then I thought "did I write that?"

In fact I did offer some of those to the ADS LISTSERV several months ago. How nice to see that the lines made it all the way here.

[Nancy Friedman]

Michael: By golly, you're right! I didn't know about your blog back then. I've dug through the ADS-L archives and updated my post to give you full credit!