manology

English

Noun

manology (uncountable)

1. (rare, dated) The study of human beings.
   • 1853, Joseph Augustine Benton, The California Pilgrim: A Series of Lectures, page 85:

     There is a deal of modernism about them, and too much enthusiasm, and wild fire, and manology, and preaching every thing, and naturalism, and all that.

   • 1886, Sam Porter Jones, Quit Your Meanness, page 32:

     He knew bugology better than he did manology, and he was acquainted with all the bugs from Adam down, and he had all kinds of them in frames hung up around his office.

   • 1908, Rev. Thomas J. Campbell, “The only true American school system”, in Bulletin of the Catholic Educational Association, volume 6:

     An enthusiastic but poorly inspired prophet in the West, has informed the world that the religion of the future is not to be, as he puts it, a matter of godology, but of manology.

   • 1916 April, “Man-ology”, in Judicious Advertising, volume 14, number 4, page 39:

     We have studied zoology, and biology, and everything under the sun but manology.

   • 1920, Ruth Van Saun, The Honey-comb: Or, Nine-months, page 79:

     A careful study of our Country Hospitals, our Insane Asylums, our Side-Shows, the numerous defectives who make their living on our public highways, (of which many are a pre-natal plague to pregnant-woman), as well as of manology in general, should quicken us to help express a more perfect humanity.