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MANHOOD
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The status of being a man
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("manhood" is a kind of...):
berth; billet; office; place; position; post; situation; spot (a job in an organization)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of being human
Example:
he feared the speedy decline of all manhood
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("manhood" is a kind of...):
quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)
Attribute:
human (having human form or attributes as opposed to those of animals or divine beings)
nonhuman (not human; not belonging to or produced by or appropriate to human beings)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The state of being a man; manly qualities
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("manhood" is a kind of...):
adulthood (the state (and responsibilities) of a person who has attained maturity)
Context examples:
When he grew to manhood, Quelala, as he was called, was said to be the best and wisest man in all the land, while his manly beauty was so great that Gayelette loved him dearly, and hastened to make everything ready for the wedding.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
And I remember, in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
"After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I should have thought shame upon my manhood, as well as my monkhood, if I had held back my hand from her.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“His human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper.”
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
There was a sound upon the stairs, and our door was opened to admit as fine a specimen of manhood as ever passed through it.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He looked desperately sad and broken; even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much-tried emotions.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day?
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Somehow, in spite of his prowess, his old school name of Boy had clung very naturally to him, until that instant when I saw him standing in his self-contained and magnificent manhood in the doorway of the ancient house.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
You licked Cheese-Face because you wouldn't give in, and you wouldn't give in partly because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed what every one about you believed, that the measure of manhood was the carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures' anatomies.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
