manliness

noun

1. (uncountable, usually)The quality of being manly; the set of qualities, traits and abilities considered appropriate to men (as opposed to women or children); similarity to a man.

   “Nought under Heaven so strongly doth allure The Sense of Man, and all his Mind possess, As Beauty’s lovely Bait, that doth procure Great Warriors oft their Rigour to repress; And mighty Hands forget their Manliness,”

   “With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose; And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear, And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear; Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief In all the silent manliness of grief.”

   “‘He he!’ simpered Brass, who, in his deep debasement, really seemed to have changed sexes with his sister, and to have made over to her any spark of manliness he might have possessed.”

   “[…] there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table beneath their mother's eyes, honour her strange severity […]”

   “Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed.”

2. (euphemistic, rare, uncountable, usually)Male genitals.

   “Dressed only in flip-flops and a fuzzy blue bathrobe, which would be long enough on the mayor of Munchkin Land but on me is literally indecent, I attack the mower in a yanking frenzy, flailing around until the dramatic conclusion, wherein the mower refuses to start even though it is confronted by the full extent of my manliness because my too-short robe has flapped open in a cloud of flying sweat and hurled profanity.”

3. (rare, uncountable, usually)Humanity, the quality of being human.

   “What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently slain.”