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OneKitly

mankind

nouncommon in dialogue

  • //mænˈkaɪnd//

The human race in its entirety.

noun

  1. 1

    The human race in its entirety.

    One small step for a man can be a giant leap for mankind.

    The examples of all ages shew us that mankind in general desire power only to do harm, and, when they obtain it, use it for no other purpose.

    But at last mankind, through their own folly, deprived themselves of the favour and kindness of the Dwarfs; they fled the country, and since that time no mortal eye has seen them.

    Malone's hot blood flushed to his head as he thought of this trifler, this insect, coming between mankind and a message of instruction and consolation descending from above.

  2. 2

    Men collectively, as opposed to all women.

    Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

    “[...] it is not fair of you to bring against mankind double weapons ! Dangerous enough you are as woman alone, without bringing to your aid those gifts of mind suited to problems which men have been accustomed to arrogate to themselves.”

  3. 3

    obsoleteHuman feelings; humanity.

    And they are two strong ties upon mankind. Justice is the virtue that innocence rejoiċeth in

Etymology

From Middle English mankynde, alteration (due to kynde = “kind, nature, sort”) of earlier mankyn, from Old English mancynn. Equivalent to man + kin, and/or man + -kind. Cognate with Scots mankind, Middle High German mankünne, Danish mandkøn, Icelandic mannkyn (“mankind”). See also mankin.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).