mannered

Etymology

It is formed from English manner + -ed,^[1][2][3][4] first as manered;^[4][3][5] Middle English also had ymanered, with the prefix y- of past participles.^[1][6] The noun goes back to Anglo-Norman manere and Old French maniere, from Vulgar Latin *manaria, from Latin manuarius (“belonging to the hand”), from manus (“hand”).^[6] The OED thinks that the obsolete literary sense was influenced by Latin mōrātus in Horace's “Ars Poetica” (“morataque recte fabula”), and compares French maniéré (“affected”) (1697) for the sense of mannerism.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Having manners or behaviour of a particular kind: c. 1400, in a manuscript of Langland's Piers Plowman, composed about 1378.^[1][5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to the 14th century,^[4] while Etymonline gives the mid-15th century, with the form ymanered from the late 14th.^[6]

Semantic evolution

In 1435 the word meant "moderate, within bounds", a rare sense that died out.^[1] From 1483, in Caxton, it meant well-behaved or polite,^[1] a sense the OED now calls chiefly regional and the Shorter Oxford long dialectal and rare.^[1][2] From 1755 to 1789 a mannered work of literature was one that portrayed character and moral conduct,^[1] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged quotes Charles Lamb's "mannered pictures" for the archaic sense of portraying social manners.^[4] The sense "given to mannerism, affected", used of art and style, is first found in 1796, in Farington's diary;^[1] Etymonline dates it by 1801, and the Shorter Oxford to the early 19th century.^[6][2] The word is now common in compounds such as ill-mannered and well-mannered.^[7][2][8]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – having manners of a specified kind.^[1][4]
• 1435 – moderate, within bounds (obsolete, rare).^[1]
• 1483 – well-behaved, polite (now chiefly regional).^[1][2]
• 1755 – of literature, portraying character and moral conduct (obsolete after 1789).^[1]
• 1796 – of art or style, given to mannerism; artificial, affected.^[1] Etymonline dates this sense by 1801.^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having manners of a stated kind, mostly in compounds: a quiet-mannered clerk.^[8][7][4]
2. Showing mannerisms; artificial, affected or over-elaborate in style: Critics found the novel's prose too mannered.^[7][8][1]
3. Having a distinctive personal manner or style.^[4][8]
4. (archaic) Of a work of art or literature, portraying manners, customs or character.^[4][1]

Word family

• overmannered
• unmannered
• ill-mannered
• well-mannered

Related words

• manner

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt