Manly means showing the courage and strength held up as ideals for a grown male. A manly handshake, manly courage, act manly.
It is praise rather than a neutral label, which is what separates it from male — and what people count as manly changes so much between times and places that the word describes a culture more than a person. The Old English sense was noble or human rather than male.
1adjectivemanlyShowing the courage and strength held up as ideals for a grown male.
“He thought crying wasn't manly, so he hid his tears.”
manly is a quality of character.
Old English manlic means human or noble, from man, which meant a person of either sex. The male sense narrowed later.
Proto-Germanic
*mannlīkaz
Proto-West Germanic
*mannlīk
Old English
*manlīċ
Middle English
manli,manlich,manly
English, today
manly
Built from
From Middle English manli,manlich,manly, from Old English manlīċ (suggested by adverb manlīċe (“in a way befitting a person; nobly, stately”)), from Proto-West Germanic mannlīk, from Proto-Germanic mannlīkaz, equivalent to man + ly. Cognate with Old High German manlīh (“manly”) (whence German männlich), Dutch mannelijk, Old Norse mannligr (“human”) (Danish mandlig, Swedish manlig).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA