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To set someone free from captivity is in effect to release that person from the hand, or control, of the captor. You can use this analogy to remember that manumit derives ultimately from the Latin noun manus, meaning "hand," and the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to let go" or "send." The two roots joined hands in Latin to form the verb manumittere (meaning "to free from slavery"), which in turn passed into Anglo-French as manumettre and eventually into Middle English as manumitten. Manus has handed down other words to English as well. One of them is emancipate, which is both a relative and synonym of manumit.
Examples of manumit in a Sentence
Frank Landymore, Futurism, 22 Jan. 2026
While the total number of persons emancipated under Friend’s guidance remains unclear, just imagine what the United States would have looked like by the late eighteenth century if all the spiritual leaders in the country had required their congregants to manumit their enslaved laborers.
—Literary Hub, 21 Jan. 2026
Nathaniel Daniel had inherited Abby Guy and manumitted her, but his brother William claimed her as property after his death.
—Brooke Greenberg, Arkansas Online, 18 Jan. 2026
Tubman’s father had been manumitted by his owner, but Brodess had inherited Tubman, hiring her and her siblings out to neighbors for seasonal work, whether trapping muskrats or clearing land.
—Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 24 June 2024
Grant would manumit his one enslaved servant, William Jones, in 1859.
—Harold Holzer, WSJ, 1 Jan. 2024
In one county, not a single enslaved person was manumitted in 1859.
—John Reeves, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Dec. 2023
Some states, like the state of Georgia, passed expulsion laws that required blacks who were manumitted to leave the state within a year of their emancipation.
—Tera W. Hunter, The Root, 15 May 2018
Cite this Entry
“Manumit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manumit. Accessed 24 Apr. 2026.
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manumit
verb
