- a variation of manikin.
noun
Etymology
Origin of mannikin
A variant of manikin
Explanation
A mannikin is a human-sized figure that's used to fit or display clothing. In the summer, the mannikins in department store windows might all be wearing bathing suits. Ooh la la. Mannikin can also be spelled manikin or mannequin — and no matter how you spell it, it almost always means "display dummy," or a lifelike, full-sized plastic model for clothes. Sometimes mannikins are used for artists to sketch, and rarely the word is also used to mean "very small person." This last meaning makes sense when you know the Dutch root word, manneken, or "little man."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Playwright Williams' instinct for the theatrical jugular makes even this mannikin play bleed greasepaint.
From Time Magazine Archive
This inoffensive knight, the irregular Conservative candidate, was not originally the presslords' mannikin.
From Time Magazine Archive
Shopgirl readers who were melted to delicious tears by Hans Fallada's mannikin novel of the depression, Little Man, What Now?, found his next book, The World Outside, much less to their liking.
From Time Magazine Archive
The baby may wriggle and mew but willy-nilly he is one more mannikin in a long, laborious, illuminating research.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the mannikin toppling forward fell before the lion with a hollow sound of brass.
From The Fifth Queen And How She Came to Court by Ford, Ford Madox
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
