1. If an assembly manual includes such parts as a cross brace, a side trivet, a hose hole, a separator panel, a corrugated tamer, a grease cup and a warming rack, what appliance is to be built?Manus is Latin for hand. The same root delivers dozens of English words. MANUAL, for example, means hand-related, applying to any sort of hands-on work, or the instruction booklet for the handy-minded person to read. MANICURE is the cosmetic care of the hands, just as MANACLES encircle a felon’s hands, and a MANAGER has the task in his grasp. Two related verbs, MANIPULATE and MANOEUVRE, draw on the notion of working, or guiding, another by hand.
Yet what about words where the hand is less visible? Try MANURE, being animal dung or other fertiliser material. This stems from the Middle English maynour, to work the soil by hand. In short, to ruin a perfectly good manicure!
Another twist is MANUFA CTURE, which means to make by hand, despite the irony that this distinction rarely applies. Just as MANUSCRIPT, written by hand, is a book or script’s first draft, commonly typed on a computer.
Lastly, there’s MASTIFF. Despite appearances, the large dog is easily tamed. In Latin, to tame is mansuescere, literally ‘to accustom by hand’. Via a few corruptions, this came to label the huge pet.
1. If an assembly manual includes such parts as a cross brace, a side trivet, a hose hole, a separator panel, a corrugated tamer, a grease cup and a warming rack, what appliance is to be built?
2. If manual means HANDY (‘like a hand’), then manual and nearby could be viewed as synonyms. Just as small and adolescent might be TEENY. Are you handy enough with lateral thinking to reveal each -Y word below, one that serves as a creative synonym for each pair?
(a) Japanese firm/filial _______________________
(b) premature/aristocratic _______________________
(c) XL/defensive _______________________
(d) wife’s fella/central _______________________
(e) sauce/sepulchral _______________________
(f) sarcasm/ferrous _______________________
(g) small/canine? _______________________
(h) exciting/cranial _______________________
(i) pal/haggard _______________________
(j) wharf/avionic _______________________
(k) dog/epicarpal _______________________
(l) exercise/i-ish? _______________________