Comments on: To the manner / manor born

By: Bruce Garr

Bruce Garr — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:23:10 +0000

I came across this discussion after finishing today’s (9/11/12) Boston Globe crossword puzzle. The answer to the clue “living royally since birth” (17 across) is “to the manner born”. Despite my initial surprise, given the Shakespearean origin of the phrase, I’ll have to allow for the correctness of the use of “manner” in this instance. Call it poetic (crossword?) license.

By: Charmed by Mysore manners « Sandhya Mendonca says

Charmed by Mysore manners « Sandhya Mendonca says — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 06:16:18 +0000

[...] of ‘ to the manner born’ instead of ‘to the manor born’, I would like to point them to http://www.word-detective.com/2011/10/to-the-manner-manor-born/. The original phrase “to the manner born” was coined by William Shakespeare in Hamlet, Act I, [...]

By: MJ

MJ — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 01:39:41 +0000

Shakespeare may have intended both meanings. A line of critics, several of whom were lawyers-cum-Shakespearians, stretching from William Rushton Lowes in the mid-1850s to George Malcolm Young in the late 1940s, made an argument about “though I am native here, and to the manner born, it is a custom more honour’d in the breach, than the observance” that draws on the legal understanding of the term “nativus,” which refers to a person born within a manor. As Horace Furness notes in his variorum edition, “Hamlet, therefore, may speak of Denmark, or Elsinore as the manor, himself as _nativus_, to the manor born, and the ‘heavy handed revel’ as a custom incident to the manor. ‘Manor’ is here used, probably, in a double sense.”

By: Maxine

Maxine — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:59:23 +0000

Check out Maureen Dowd’s op-ed column in NYTimes, Wed., 1/18/12. She compares “Poppy” Bush and Mitt Romney as both being “to the manner born.” I would have much preferred that she use “manor” rather than “manner.” It seems that, as you said, “manner” in its original sense is indeed headed for extinction. If the NYTimes thinks the two meanings are synonymous, and chooses to print “manner born” in reference to Bush and Romney, who am I to argue? On the other hand, why does it bother me so??

By: Katie Baker

Katie Baker — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:33:17 +0000

I found “to the manner born” referring to Romney on January 18, 2012 in the NYT. Meaning, of course, “to the manor born.” So, maybe common usage will trump M-W Dictionary and logic?