Other forms: managed, managing, manages
To manage is to succeed at something difficult, especially with limited means. Manage to get there, we managed, can you manage?
That sense is very British and very useful — managing implies effort and just enough. The other main sense is to be in charge: manage a team, manage a shop, and the noun is a manager. It also means to cope generally: how do you manage? Note manage to do something, always with an infinitive, and that manage without means to get by without something you would have liked.
1verbmanageTo succeed in doing something difficult.
“She managed to get everybody in one room.”
2verbchargeTo be in charge of a business or team.
“He managed the shop for eleven years.”
3verbcopeTo cope, especially with limited means.
“They managed on one income for a long time.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
manage is a way of coping or directing.
Italian maneggiare meant to handle a horse, from Latin manus, a hand. Managing was originally horsemanship — the same word gives manège, a riding school — and the sense of running a business is a metaphor from the training ring.
en-ear
manage
roa-oit
maneggiare
Old French
manege
Middle English
*manage
English, today
manage
From Middle English manage, from Old French manege, from roa-oit maneggiare. From en-ear manage, menage, from Middle English manage, menage, from Old French manege (“the handling or training of a horse, horsemanship, riding, maneuvers, proceedings”), probably from roa-oit maneggiare (“to handle, manage, touch, treat”), from Vulgar Latin manizāre (“handle”), from Latin manus (“hand”) + -izō. a doublet of manège. Compare typologically handle; руководи́ть (< рука́).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA