man in the moon

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English

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WOTD – 21 July 2024

Etymology

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A 19th-century illustration of the man in the moon (sense 1) as a man with a burden on his back, in this case a woodcutter who was found by Moses gathering sticks on the Sabbath and exiled to the Moon, based on a Germanic folktale.[n 1]
The man in the moon (sense 1) being struck in the face by a spacecraft in a frame from French film director Georges Méliès’s 1902 film Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon).

From man + in + the + moon.[1]

Pronunciation

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Proper noun

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man in the moon

  2. An image of a man perceived in the dark maria (plains or "seas") and light highlands or other features of the Moon, originally regarded as a man with a burden on his back or accompanied by a small dog, and now more commonly as a man's face in the full moon or his profile in a crescent moon; hence, an imaginary man thought to be living on the Moon.
    Synonym: moonman
  3. (obsolete, figurative) An imaginary person; also (UK politics, slang), an unidentified person who illegally pays for election expenditure and electors' expenses, as long as the latter vote as the person wishes.
    • 1596, Tho[mas] Nashe, “Dialogus”, in Haue with You to Saffron-Walden. Or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt is Up. […], London: […] John Danter, →OCLC; republished as J[ohn] P[ayne] C[ollier], editor, Have with You to Saffron-Walden (Miscellaneous Tracts; Temp. Eliz. and Jac. I), [London: s.n., 1870], →OCLC, page 131:
      Non eſt inventus: there's no ſuch man to be found; let them that have the commiſſion for the concealments looke after it, or the man in the moone put for it.
    • 1851 March 29, Edwin James, counsel for the petitioners, William Locke, witness, “Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Select Committee on the Aylesbury Election Petition”, in Reports from Committees: […], volume 6, [London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office], →OCLC, page 17:
      235. To whom did you say that you wanted a ticket for home?—The stranger. / 236. The Man in the Moon?—Yes. / […] / 245. And I may ask you, was it also included as one of the tickets in the amount that the Man in the Moon paid you?—[…]—Yes, it was; the last received by me.
    • 1862, T[homas] Campbell Foster, W[illiam] F[rancis] Finlason, reporters, “Regina v. John Barff Charlesworth”, in Reports of Cases Decided at Nisi Prius and at the Crown Side on Circuit; with Select Decisions at Chambers, volume II (Hilary Vacation, 1860, to Hilary Vacation, 1862), London: V. & R. Stevens, Sons, & Haynes; Sweet; and Maxwell;  […]; Dublin: Hodges, Smith & Co., […], →OCLC, page 330:
      There was a man named Moore, a stranger in the town, whose pedigree nobody could trace, and who was called the "Man in the Moon." He was thought to move about and dispose of money in a way which nobody could trace. He had received a sum of 500l., and out of that he had paid to Mr. Lang, innkeeper, a sum of 50l., and he did not vote at all. Next came a Thomas Stead, a shopkeeper, in Northgate, Wakefield, who had received 60l., which was paid to him by Dan Robinson, an understrapper to the "Man in the Moon." The money was thus traced to Moore, from him to Fernandes, and from him to the defendant and to Beckett's bank, where it had been placed by Mr. J[ohn] D[odgson] Charlesworth, the candidate.

Alternative forms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Notes

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  1. ^ See S[abine] Baring-Gould (1890) “The Man in the Moon”, in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, London: Rivingtons […], →OCLC, pages 190–191.

References

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  1. ^ “man in the moon, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “man in the moon, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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