mane
Americannoun
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the long hair growing on the back of or around the neck and neighboring parts of some animals, as the horse or lion.
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Informal. (on a human being) a head of distinctively long and thick or rough hair.
noun
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the long coarse hair that grows from the crest of the neck in such mammals as the lion and horse
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long thick human hair
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mane
before 900; Middle English; Old English manu; cognate with German Mähne, Dutch manen, Old Norse mǫn
Explanation
Use the noun mane when you talk about an animal's ruff of neck hair. A male lion's mane can be very fluffy and dramatic. A mane is a patch or growth of long hair, whether it's found on a lion or down the neck of a pony, or even on a human's head. You might stroke a horse's mane while sitting on its back, or you could compliment your friend on her beautiful mane of long blonde hair. The Old English root is manu, which comes from a Proto-Indo-European root, mon, which means "neck" or "nape of the neck."
Vocabulary lists containing mane
Horsin' Around
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"A Contest of Riddles"
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When I Was the Greatest
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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.
See Examples For:
The bout was hair vs. hair; whichever billionaire lost would be stripped of their mane in the ring.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Here you might spy a lion’s mane jellyfish, whose stinging tentacles have been known to grow more than 100 feet, longer than the length of a basketball court.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
I really like the grilled lion’s mane steak, their mushroom steak with truffle potatoes, or the scallopini Milanese, that has a chicken or tofu option.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2026
On Fox News, Essayli, sporting a blue FBI windbreaker, hyped the arrest of Orellana, a quiet, wiry man with a long mane of coal-black hair.
From Salon ● Apr. 15, 2026
I turn around to see Emma running across the yard, her bare feet kicking up grass clippings and her disheveled hair flying in the breeze like a lion’s mane.
From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller
The screens hang above the row of committee members who all look crisper and a bit more self-consciously groomed than usual with their blowouts and trimmed beards and clipped manes.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 14, 2022
Horse’s manes and reptilian scales are among other details that helped inform her overall design.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
But recently she has been inspired by the girls she sees walking around the city with vivid neon manes.
From New York Times ● Sep. 7, 2021
Many were emaciated, with unkempt manes and untrimmed hooves, she said, and they often had parasites.
From Seattle Times ● May 15, 2021
Each was pulled by a team of skeletal horses with manes of fire.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
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.
