manliness

noun

Etymology: From Middle English manlynes, manlynesse. By surface analysis, manly + -ness.

1. The quality of being manly; the set of qualities, traits and abilities considered appropriate to men (as opposed to women or children); similarity to a man.

   “Nought under Heaven so strongly doth allure The Sense of Man, and all his Mind possess, As Beauty’s lovely Bait, that doth procure Great Warriors oft their Rigour to repress; And mighty Hands forget their Manliness,”

   “With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose; And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear, And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear; Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief In all the silent manliness of grief.”

2. Male genitals.

   “Dressed only in flip-flops and a fuzzy blue bathrobe, which would be long enough on the mayor of Munchkin Land but on me is literally indecent, I attack the mower in a yanking frenzy, flailing around until the dramatic conclusion, wherein the mower refuses to start even though it is confronted by the full extent of my manliness because my too-short robe has flapped open in a cloud of flying sweat and hurled profanity.”

3. Humanity, the quality of being human.

   “What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently slain.”