mannikin

American  

[man-i-kin] / ˈmæn ɪ kɪn /

noun

1. manikin.

2. any of several estrildid finches of the genus Lonchura, of Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, often kept as cage birds.

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mannikin British  

/ ˈmænɪkɪn /

noun

1. a variant spelling of manikin

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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

He rigged up a blocky mannikin with swiveled arms and wired innards.

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

In this one it is a ferocious mannikin with unbrushed hair, a flat, angry voice and a perpetual frown.

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

And the stony cheek of the little mannikin was alongside his own, and his two eyes lit up the hole better than lanterns would have done.

From Flemish Legends by Coster, Charles de