man [OE] The English word man goes back to an age-old root that also gave manu, ‘humankind’, in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. From Anglo-Saxon times, man meant both ‘a person of either sex’ and ‘an adult male’, as well as the human race in general. The original man for all seasons was Sir Thomas More, the scholar and statesman who wrote Utopia and was beheaded for opposing Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. It was used to describe him in 1520 but came into prominence in 1960 as the title of a play about More by Robert Bolt. From the late 16th century ‘cloth’ has been used to describe any particular livery or distinctive clothing, and man of the cloth initially often referred to a servant. Nowadays it is limited to a clergyman.

Man for humans in general survives in expressions such as the man in the street [L18th]. The judge Lord Bowen (1835–94) used the man on the Clapham omnibus (Clapham is a district of south London) to refer to any ordinary reasonable person, such as a juror is expected to be. ‘Man cannot live by bread alone’ is found in two passages of the Bible, one from the Old Testament in Deuteronomy, and the other from the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew. The proverb man proposes, God disposes goes back to the 14th century, but also translates a Latin saying of the theologian Thomas à Kempis (c.1380–1471). The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras provided a precedent for man is the measure of all things in the 5th century bc, recorded in English from the mid 17th century.

As a way of addressing someone, man goes right back to the Anglo-Saxons and was common in the 18th and 19th centuries, although the old uses tended to sound impatient or encouraging—‘Pick up your feet, man!’ The modern use of man, often expressing surprise, admiration, or delight, came from the speech of black Americans in the early 19th century. See also mouse.