man because a man is born in a stable that does not make him a horse proverbial saying, mid 19th century; sometimes attributed to the Duke of Wellington, who asserted that being born in Ireland did not make him Irish.
man cannot live by bread alone one needs spiritual as well as physical sustenance. Proverbial saying, late 19th century, originally with biblical allusion to Matthew 4:4, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’
a man for all seasons a person who is ready for any situation or contingency, or adaptable to any circumstance; originally, as a description of St Thomas More by Robert Whittington in
Vulgaria (1521). Erasmus had applied the idea earlier, describing More in
In Praise of Folly (1509) as ‘a man of all hours’.
Man Friday in Daniel Defoe's novel
Robinson Crusoe (1719) Crusoe's servant, to whom he usually refers as ‘my man Friday’, named for the day on which Crusoe saved his life. From the early 19th century the term has been used to designate a (male) helper or follower.
man in the moon a mythical person supposed to live in the moon. Inhabitants of the moon were postulated in ancient and Hellenistic Greek texts; the use in English, recorded from Middle English, derives from the imagined semblance of a person or a human face in the disc of the (full) moon. By the mid 16th century, the man in the moon had become proverbial as the type of someone too distant to have any understanding or knowledge of a person's circumstances.
a man is as old as he feels, and a woman as old as she looks proverbial saying, late 19th century; both parts of the proverb are sometimes used on their own.
man is the measure of all things everything can be understood in terms of humankind. The saying is recorded in English from the mid 16th century, but the proverb is found earlier in Greek, and is attributed by Plato to the Greek sophist Protagoras (b.
c.485 bc).
Man of Sorrows a name for Jesus Christ, deriving from a prophecy in Isaiah 53:3; in art represented as an image of Christ surrounded by instruments of the Passion.
man proposes, God disposes often now said in consolation or resignation when plans have been disrupted. The saying is recorded in English from the mid 15th century, but early 14th-century French has, ‘for if man proposes evil, God…disposes of it.’
man's extremity is God's opportunity great distress or danger may prompt a person to turn to God for help; proverbial saying, early 17th century.
whatever man has done, man may do anything that has been achieved once can be achieved again. The saying is recorded from the mid 19th century, but there is a similar idea behind a comment (1723) of S. Cranston, recorded in G. S. Kimball
Correspondence of Colonial Governors of Rhode Island (1902), ‘But as the Proverb is what hath been may be again.’
See also
angry young man,
the child is the father of the man,
a man is known by the company he keeps,
every man for himself,
God made the country and man made the town,
like master, like man,
one man's meat is another man's poison,
men,
money makes a man,
mouse and man,
nine tailors make a man,
no moon, no man,
old man of the mountains,
man of straw,
white man's burden,
white van man,
a young man married.
