manœuvre

English

Noun

manœuvre (plural manœuvres)

1. (UK, formerly Australia) Alternative form of manoeuvre
   • 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter III, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. , volume I, London: Henry Colburn, , published 1842, →OCLC, page 25:

     She delighted in schemes and in projects; she governed her husband by a series of manœuvres, whose only fault was their being entirely wasted; as a simple wish, openly expressed, would have answered every purpose.

   • 1850, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre:

     […] but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manœuvres; and one had but to accept it — to answer what he asked […]

   • 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet:

     Gregson and Lestrade had watched the manœuvres of their amateur companion with considerable curiosity and some contempt.

   • 1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 131:

     Peter, forging ahead with the bag, stopped to see the result of these manœuvres.

   • 1940, Winston Churchill, We shall fight on the beaches:

     […] we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manœuvre.

   • 1968, Robert Conquest, “The Purge Begins”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties‎, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, pages 74–75:

     All early accounts agree that one of Stalin’s characteristics was ‘laziness’ or ‘indolence’ - which Bukharin impressed on Trotsky as Stalin’s ‘most striking quality’. Trotsky remarked that Stalin ‘never did any serious work’ but was always ‘busy with his intrigues’. Another way of putting this is that Stalin paid the necessary attention to the detail of political manœuvre.

   • 2003, David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, page 7:

     […] and the belief that states had increasingly little room for manœuvre if they wanted their people to benefit from it.

Verb

manœuvre (third-person singular simple present manœuvres, present participle manœuvring, simple past and past participle manœuvred)

1. (UK) Alternative form of manoeuvre
   • 1954, Gilbert Ryle, “dilemma vii: Perception”, in Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, page 103:

     We can ask how long it was before the team scored its first goal; or how long the centre-forward spent in manœuvring the ball towards the goal; and even how long the ball was in flight between his kicking it and its going between the goal-posts. But we cannot ask how many seconds were occupied in the scoring of the goal.

   • 1963 June, “Second thoughts on Beeching”, in Modern Railways, page 362:

     Mr.Marples has thus manœuvred himself into a corner.

Anagrams

• manoeuver, manœuver

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ma.nœvʁ/

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Etymology 1

From Vulgar Latin manū opera, from ablative of Latin manus (“hand”) + opus (“work”).

Noun

manœuvre f (plural manœuvres)

1. move, movement
2. operation, manoeuvre
3. (military, in the plural) manoeuvres

Derived terms

• fausse manœuvre
• marge de manœuvre

Related terms

• manœuvrer

Descendants

• → Arabic: مُنَاوَرَة (munāwara)
• → Crimean Tatar: manövr
• → Romanian: manevră
• → Turkish: manevra

Noun

manœuvre m (plural manœuvres)

1. labourer

See also

• main-d’œuvre

Etymology 2

Verb

manœuvre

1. inflection of manœuvrer:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “manœuvre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Middle French

Noun

manœuvre f (plural manœuvres)

1. maneuver (movement)

Descendants

• → Polish: manewr