manage [M16th] Managers [M16th] now manage businesses, but the first things to be managed were horses. The earliest sense of manage in English was ‘to handle or train a horse’, or put it through the exercises of the manège [M17th]. This French word, used in English to mean ‘an area in which horses and riders are trained’ and ‘horsemanship’, is at root the same word as manage—both go back through Italian to Latin manus ‘hand’, the source also of manacles [ME] which restrain your hands; manicure [L19th] care of your hands; manipulate [E19th] to handle something; *manner; *manoeuvre; manual [LME] either done with your hands or a handbook; and manuscript [L16th] something written by hand.