Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A man short in stature.
- n. A mannequin.
- n. An anatomical model of the human body for use in teaching.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A little man; a dwarf; a pygmy.
- n. A model of the human body, used for showing the structure, form, and position of the various organs, limbs, muscles, etc., or adapted and used for practising bandaging or for performing certain obstetrical operations, as delivery with the forceps.
- n. An artists' model of the human figure. See lay-figure and manequin.
- n. A non-oscine passerine bird of the subfamily Piprinæ. Manikins are generally small, thick-set, and of brilliant plumage; with few exceptions, they are natives of the hottest parts of America. They feed on vegetable and animal substances, and are lively and active in their movements. The bearded manikin, Manacus manacus, is black, with the breast, neck, and tuft of feathers on the chin white. The species are numerous, and the sexes are diverse in color and often in form, the males of many having curiously shaped wings or tail. The name sometimes extends to all the Pipridœ, and to some members of the related family Cotingidœ. See cut under
Manacus . [In this sense usually manakin, conformably with the New Latin Manacus.] - Like a manikin; artificial.
Wiktionary
- n. alternative spelling of mannequin.
- n. a short person
- n. a life-size anatomical model used as a teaching aid
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A little man; a dwarf; a pygmy; a manakin.
- n. A model of the human body, made of papier-mache or other material, commonly in detachable pieces, for exhibiting the different parts and organs, their relative position, etc.
- n. A mannequin.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a woman who wears clothes to display fashions
- n. a person who is very small but who is not otherwise deformed or abnormal
- n. a life-size dummy used to display clothes
Etymologies
- Dutch mannekijn, from Middle Dutch, diminutive of man, man; see man-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I'd always wondered if there was a term for this kind of thing, and it turns out there is: 'manikin'.”
“So I felt sorry for her, people passing her on the sidewalk like she was a manikin who needed a life but all she got was stillness, which is a form of nothing.”
Fictionaut: Unaswered E-mails Over a Cup of Coffee and a Microwaved Danish
“Then it is something that you can also keep around after Halloween, this is something that every gamer would love to have set up in his theater room, you could order a cheap manikin and put the master chief costume on it for display all year round.”
“He walked like a manikin, living high and talking big.”
“Joanna at the wonderful Morbid Anatomy blog posted this exquisite ivory anatomical manikin, circa 1500-1700.”
“At times a manikin of light, at times in the shape of the mundane salamander that bore the same name, this was the eyes and ears of the mage who had conjured it.”
“Had the clumsy wheel-chair, heavy with its own momentum, sailed into space like one of those ridiculous flying contraptions in a James Bond film, the little manikin secure among his gadgets, ready to pull the lever and sport wings?”
“One other oddity: Maddie wasn't stuck in her usual manikin mode.”
“If your clothes say who you are, you're a manikin.”
“Makes you wonder if there is a presidential manikin kept around for photo ops”
Makes you wonder if there is a presidential manikin kept around for photo ops
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘manikin’.
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Mobying Along
looks like there's not an open Moby Dick list. So now there is.
hypos, Manhattoes, circumambulate, mole, grapnels, bowsprit, asphaltic, mazy, tranced, cataract, ungraspable, judgmatically and 227 more...
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birds
birds with singular names from
at least 9 English dictionariesaasvogel, aberdevine, accentor, accipiter, aepyornis, agami, albatross, alcatras, alcid, alcidine, amadavat, amokura and 1056 more...
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Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms
135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms =)
artless, baggage, barnacle, bawdy, beef-witted, bladder, boil-brained, bootless, brazen, cankerblossom, churlish, churrish and 123 more...
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Allographic Homophones
Words that can be pronounced identically but are spelled differently. I've started with unusual or extensive sets. In some of these sets, no one speaker would pronounce them all the same. I've trie...
air, are, ayr, ayre, e'er, ere, err, eyre, heir, apatite, appetite, picnic and 226 more...
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Oh them words, them words
My fancies, my cudgels.
liquescent, ferly, lamia, basilisk, trigon, fantast, stirp, tristesse, enfleurage, stemma, formicary, lacrimation and 346 more...
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researchgirl's Words
palpable, vade mecum, penumbra, ephemera, esoteric, quirky, quintessential, aphorism, amnesia, insomnia, synesthesia, apostasy and 186 more...
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the worshipful company of haberdashers
NB: this list being not limited to haberdashery in the strictest sense, but also including items of the milliner's trade, the mercer's trade, and the tailor's trade, it is to be noted that I just r...
button, ribbon, damask, silk, satin, wool, gabardine, felt, trilby, haberdashery, velvet, linen and 138 more...
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End in -kin
You heard it here first. Well, maybe not first, but you heard it here. Well, maybe not "heard," but read. You read it here. At some point.
gherkin, merkin, firkin, malkin, pumpkin, bumpkin, pipkin, bodkin, napkin, mannikin, pigskin, sealskin and 83 more...
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But Shakespeare's magic could not cop...
My favourite words from Shakespeare
pomander, bawcock, dulcet, fleshment, fustian, aierie, manikin, minikin, assay, noddle, perforce, pother and 35 more...
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out forms
Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
chinoiserie, rhyparography, Ludibrium, Tarasque, Trabant, joropo, blocage, crannog, whitsour, zampogna, scamillus, Kacapi and 77 more...
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flinchers
words that make me uncomfortable
moist, loin, secret to a tiny ..., bacon cheddar ranch, discharge, Yoplait, weevil, splurge, palpate, fissure, exude, humectant and 77 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for manikin.

mollusque A small man; a dwarf or pygmy. Sep 28, 2008