Mind your “manors”

8 comments October 7th, 2008

There was no activity on this blog last week, because I was dealing with clogging instead of blogging.

I went to the Rockford Memorial emergency room Monday, had a stent put into a major artery Tuesday and went home Wednesday, where I spent the rest of the week recuperating. So I had a lot of time to read — and find a wealth of material for this week.

One of the things I came across was “in a gentlemanly manor.” Homonyms again, although this one is most often encountered in the phrase “to the manor born.” In both cases, the correct word is “manner.”

A “manor” is a dwelling. It comes from the Latin “manere,” “to remain,” so a manor is a place to stay. Two other kinds of residence from the same source are “mansion” and “manse,” a parsonage.

“Manner,” on the other hand, comes from “hand” — that is, “manus,” Latin for “hand.” “Manner” is all about behavior, attitude, method and style, as in “table manners,” “ill-mannered” and “What manner of man is this?” As you might expect, lots of hands-on words are derived from the same root: “manual,” “manage,” “manufacture,” “manifest” and “mandate.”

Interestingly, neither is where “man” comes from, but there’s no way I’m going to get into the origins of man here.