Mane

How to spell mane

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mane

What does mane mean?

1. nounThe long hair growing along the neck of a horse, lion, or similar animal.

Mane in a sentence

• The groom brushed the tangles out of the horse's mane before the show.

• The male lion shook its thick mane as it crossed the open ground.

Where does mane come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Mane comes from the Old English word 'manu', which described the long hair growing along the neck of a horse or other animal. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives such as Old Norse 'mon', Dutch 'manen', and German 'Mahne', all naming the same neck hair. Scholars trace these words back to an ancient Indo-European root meaning 'neck' or 'nape', which is why the term has always been tied to that part of the body rather than to hair in general. The modern spelling settled with a silent final 'e' that lengthens the vowel, a common English pattern. Because it sounds exactly like 'main' and 'Maine', the trap is purely the spelling: this animal-hair word keeps the simple m-a-n-e form.

How the word is built

• mane (from Old English manu: hair on the neck of a horse or lion)

Words that sound like mane

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• main: Most important, largest, or principal among several things.