Other forms: manhandled, manhandling, manhandles
To manhandle is to move somebody roughly by force. Manhandled out of the room, manhandle the crates, roughly manhandled.
It works for objects as well as people, and there it simply means moving something heavy by hand rather than by machine. Applied to a person it is always a complaint. Note that the man in it originally meant to work by hand, not by men.
1verbmanhandleTo move somebody roughly by force.
“The security guards manhandled the protester out of the building.”
manhandle is a rough handling.
Man plus handle, from an older sense of working something by hand rather than by machine.
Middle English
manne-handlen
English, today
manhandle
From Middle English manne-handlen, man handelen, equivalent to man + handle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA