Mm: Mannishness: Mannishness

Mannish \Man"nish\, a. [Man + -ish: cf. AS. mennisc, menisc.]

1. Resembling a human being in form or nature; human.
      --Chaucer.
      [1913 Webster]

            But yet it was a figure
            Most like to mannish creature.        --Gower.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. Resembling, suitable to, or characteristic of, a man,
      manlike, masculine. --Chaucer.
      [1913 Webster]

            A woman impudent and mannish grown.   --Shak.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. Fond of men; -- said of a woman. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
      [1913 Webster] -- Man"nish*ly,adv. -- Man"nish*ness,
      n.
      [1913 Webster]See also:
Man"nish*ly Man"nish*ness 

Source: The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

In Context:

Christian Louboutin The distinctions between boyishness and mannishness, and between masculine masquerade and masculine costume, are crucial. Nowhere does Liscombe describe herself or her friends as manly (or as interested in parodying men); but this is not to say that she is unaware of the “styling” adopted by Christian Louboutin Trottinette Boots Suede Black 15 mannish women. This insight is recorded during her travels to Boston when she describes some patrons at a YWCA cafeteria: This was a group of ladies who apparently were not in Boston for any W.M.S. convention. They talked and laughed loudly and smoked incessantly and they didn’t smoke like blase sophisticated women, you know, two little puffs and then a gentle strike on the side of the saucer, or a cautious finger removing the ash, but they blew the smoke with a sharp blast through the nose and did their talking with cigarette dangling from lower lip. And I bet they told good jokes too! (1934b, 28) I have Christian Louboutin Trottinette ankle boots Brown 14 made the point that Liscombe understood the line separating decent women from “loose” ones. Frida’s sexual display and Gertrude’s cigarettes (and flirting and makeup) signal “cheap” women; but the YWCA ladies’ dangling smokes, along with their loud voices and other “sharp” mannerisms, mark them as mannish. After Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 “queer moment,” masculine, cigarettesmoking women such as those Liscombe describes during this 1934 trip are often associated with lesbianism (Oosterhuis 2000, 66; Behling 2001, 3; Doan 2001, 1078). Since divergence from the social norm is noticed, Gertrude, Frida, and the YWCA Christian Louboutin Tall Platform Boots Black 13 are objects of fascination in a culture that leaves little room to deviate. Perhaps that is why Liscombe has coded language for her university crushes and why she continues to go off with her female friends for “twilight moments” across Sydney’s Harbour to “the rock” near Crawley’s Creek, or into the backwoods off the Highland Trail where there is more privacy for a sartorial aesthetic that would not stigmatize the group as mannish or as lesbian. Ella Liscombe’s story is a remarkable combination of self-invention and selfknowledge. She manages to live the life she wants.

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