Definition of "manikin"

Best scene: Hope trying to sneak the clothes off a department-store manikin without attracting attention from the crowd outside the window.

1951 April 2, “New Picture”, in Time

Students should be told in advance that training sessions will involve close physical contact with manikins used by their fellow students.

1997, American Red Cross, Sport Safety Training: Instructor’s Manual, Granada Learning Limited, p. 118

This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.

c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

She was very good natur’d, and not above Forty foot high, being little for her age. She gave me the name Grildrig, which the Family took up, and afterwards the whole Kingdom. The Word imports what the Latins call Nanunculus, the Italians Homunceletino, and the English Mannikin.

1727, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels‎, London: Benj. Motte, Volume 1, Part II, Chapter 1, p. 31

[…] when he asked Harry about singing, the lad broke out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin Luther, which set Mr. Holt a-laughing; and even caused his grand parrain in the laced hat and periwig to laugh too when Holt told him what the child was singing. For it appeared that Dr. Martin Luther’s hymns were not sung in the churches Mr. Holt preached at. ¶ “You must never sing that song any more: do you hear, little mannikin?” says my Lord Viscount, holding up a finger.

1852, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 3, in The History of Henry Esmond‎

“Well, my mannikin, what do you think of us?” asked Rose, to break an awkward pause.

1876, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 1, in Rose in Bloom‎

I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. “Cavor!” I bawled, and the sound was like some manikin shouting far away.

1900 December – 1901 August, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “chapter 19”, in The First Men in the Moon, London: George Newnes, […], published 1901

I hope you will not consider the expression too anthropomorphically, and picture the dream censor as a severe little manikin who lives in a little brain chamber and there performs his duties […]

1920, Sigmund Freud, translated by G. Stanley Hall, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis‎, New York: Horace Liveright, Ninth Lecture, p. 114

[…] he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days’ old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 3”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

The window […] contains the only pleasant object in the place. This is a beautiful little miniature theatre,—that is to say, the orchestra and stage. It is fitted with charmingly painted scenery and all the appliances for scenic changes. There are tiny traps and delicately constructed “lifts,” and real footlights fed with burning-fluid, and in the orchestra sits a diminutive conductor before his desk, surrounded by musical manikins, all provided with the smallest of violoncellos, flutes, oboes, drums, and such like.

1859, Fitz James O’Brien, “The Wondersmith” in The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien, James R. Osgood & Co., 1881, reprinted by University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 179-180

“ […] I rigged up a kind of mannikin with old coats and a cushion—something to cast a shadow on the blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours—I counted on that, and knew you’d take any vague outline as mine.”

1910, Edith Wharton, “The Bolted Door”, in Tales of Men and Ghosts‎, London: Macmillan, page 40