Talk:mannish

Fond of men

The sense "fond of men" does not appear to be attested in the work of Chaucer, and it does not appear in the unabridged OED (Oxford English Dictionary). If this sense cannot be verified it should be removed. (Aabull2016 (talk) 04:41, 13 November 2016 (UTC))

Ah, Webster 1913... they will have modernised the spelling from what's actually attested (i.e. it might be manishe or something); and if it exists, it should be under Middle English. Equinox ◑ 17:02, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November–December 2017

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mannish

Rfv-sense: (obsolete, of a woman) Fond of men.

Previously tagged, not listed here. - Amgine/ ^t·e 18:46, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Impertinent

The "impertinent, assertive" sense might need strengthening to include "aggressive" or even "bad": see the cite under it, the ref I just added (which glosses the sense "Impertinent and aggressive; manifesting a tendency towards adult behaviour"), and e.g.

• 2010 August 10, Harold Ford, Jr., More Davids Than Goliaths: A Political Education, Crown, →ISBN, page 25:

  In my grandmother's dictionary, “mannish” meant bad, and “fast” meant sexually precocious. My grandmother would always call my brothers and me mamiish when we violated the rules in her house. Mama believed that if you hung around with a […]

The "impertinent" sense and the "precocious" sense both bleed into the 'acting adult' sense(s), which makes finding truly distinctive citations hard; for example, here is a non-AAVE, non-Caribbean author using mannish of precocious, impertinent youths:

• 1891, William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work (Complete), Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:

  We now come to the first of those precocious youths in whose mannish ways, whose delightful impertinence to their elders, whose early susceptibility to the passion of love for ladies three times older than themselves, are shown by Leech in […]

(That lack of clear differentiation is why I merged the sense back in 2017, but I think the division is somewhat clearer now that precociousness isn't part of all three definitions.) - -sche (discuss) 05:09, 12 September 2022 (UTC)