Other forms: manuals
Manual means done by hand rather than by machine. Muscle instead of a motor.
It covers work, since manual labour is physical work, and controls, since a manual car has a gearstick and a clutch where an automatic has neither. Anything with an automatic version tends to acquire a manual one as its opposite. The noun is a book of instructions, so a car manual or a user manual is what you never read until something breaks. The adverb manually means by hand.
Manual is of the hand, from Latin manus, which is why one word covers handwork and the handbook alike.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)meh₂-
Latin
manuāle — handbook, manual
Old French
manuel
Middle English
manuel
English, today
manual
From Middle English manuel, from Old French manuel, from Latin manuāle (“handbook, manual”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word