Manipulate

How to spell manipulate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce manipulate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does manipulate mean?

1. verbTo influence or control someone or something cleverly and often dishonestly to your own advantage.
2. verbTo handle, adjust, or operate something skilfully with the hands or with controls.

Manipulate in a sentence

• The broker tried to manipulate the share price before selling.

• The surgeon learned to manipulate the tiny instruments with great care.

• A skilled negotiator can manipulate a discussion without anyone noticing.

• You can manipulate the image in the software to crop and resize it.

Where does manipulate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin manipulus, meaning 'a handful' or 'a small bundle', which was built from manus 'hand' combined with a root linked to filling or grasping. In Roman use a manipulus was also a unit of soldiers, a small company carrying a standard, so the idea of something gathered into the hand ran through it. English borrowed the verb in the early 1800s by way of the French manipuler, which the French had coined from the same Latin source to describe working a substance with the hands, especially in chemistry and pharmacy. From that literal sense of handling something skilfully, the meaning soon broadened to operating machinery and then, less flatteringly, to steering people or facts by cunning. The hand at the heart of the word is a useful memory hook: think of manus 'hand' giving the 'man' at the start, just as it does in 'manual' and 'manufacture'.

How the word is built

• manipul- (from Latin manipulus: a handful)
• -ate (verb suffix)