manita

Borrowed from Spanish manita (“little hand”), feminine-form diminutive of mano (“hand”), because the small red flowers of the tree resemble five-fingered human hands.

one of the hand-like flowers of the manita tree

manita (plural manitas)

1. (rare) The tree Chiranthodendron pentadactylon, or the red, hand-like flower this tree produces.
   • 1828, Mark Beaufoy, Mexican illustrations, founded upon facts, page 230:

     […] The manita tree,* so named from the singular formation of its flower, a drawing of which is placed as the frontispiece of this book, is a species of plant almost unknown in the catalogues of botanists.

     * Manita means a little hand.

   • 1829 October 3, in the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette, number 321, page 112:

     Tradition states, that though the Indians did not actually worship the manita tree, yet they regarded the flower with a sort of religious veneration.

   • 1838, John Murray, The economy of vegetation, or phœnomena of plants, page 159:

     The curious manita, or ‘hand tree,’ near the city of Mexico, is another of these curiosities.

   • circa 1846, Traveling Sketches, from a work by Waddy Thompson, republished in the Rural Repository (1846 July 18), volume 22, number 23, page 181:

     […] with high walls on every side but open at the top and certainly not exceeding 80 feet square, and this is the botanic garden of the palace of Mexico; a few shrubs and plants and the celebrated manita tree, are all that it contains.

   • 1852, Victoria Alexandrina M.L. Gregory, A young traveller's journal of a tour in North and South America during the year 1850

     Close by was a plant of the manita, a flower which the Aztecs used to worship ; it is in the form of a hand, with four fingers and a thumb : this they imagined to be the hand of one of their most powerful deities, and adored it ; its colour is a brilliant scarlet.

   • 1928, Ernest Gruening, Mexico and its heritage, page 74:

     Here one finds among remedies for every organ and ailment, manita, whose red flower, shaped like thumb and four fingers gives its name “the little hand.”

   • 2000, Stephen Harrigan, The Gates of the Alamo: A Novel:

     A sign nailed to a manita tree read “Jardín Botánica.” Edmund surveyed this pathetic place in disbelief. The botanic garden of the Palace of Mexico was cramped, airless, light-starved, and populated with meager, untended specimens — […]

• Devil's hand tree, devil's hand tree; Mexican hand tree; handflower, handflower tree; macpalxochitl

• Mantia, animat, manati

• Hyphenation: ma‧ni‧ta

manita

1. the female participant of a manito manita

manita f (plural manitas)

1. diminutive of mano, little hand

• manito

First used in 1882, as Ottoman Turkish mantinota (“mistress”), from Italian mantenuta (“kept woman”). Compare with mantenuto (“kept man”).

manita (definite accusative manitayı, plural manitalar)

1. girl friend, chick
   • 1882, Ahmed Midhat Efendi, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     mantinota: "metres, sürekli görülen hayat kadını"

     mantinota: "mistress, regularly seen courtesan"

2. lover (unisex)