Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

[Grimblast]

I don't know. Payday 2 seems to question Matt's sexuality a lot. In one session, the game rewarded him with a pink mask dye and a silencer called,"Size Isn't Everything". Shortly after, he got a female manikin mask....

[Zancarius]

Shortly after, he got a female manikin mask....

So, I learned something new today, because I thought you wrote mankini (¡viva lysdexia!). Then I was puzzled, because (no offense to Matt) I'm not especially fond of picturing him in a mankini. Regardless, my initial thought was did Josh mean mannequin (which is the way I've always seen it spelled--for that I blame my mixed British/Australian roots).

It turns out that manikin is an acceptable alternative spelling, but is used (in English, that is) more generically to mean any form of mannequin. Or, for that matter, any model of the human anatomy. Skeletons on display in biology classes might therefore qualify as forms of manikins. The reason for this is due to its original roots in the Dutch word manneken, which is their diminutive form of man. As I understand it, though, mannequin arrived to the English language via the inherently poor spelling abilities of French nationals, whereafter it was exported with substantial mangling.

Coincidentally, and presumably due to the word's Dutch origins, manikin may also refer to dwarves or pygmies. Given this, the implications that Matt got a "female manikin mask" are even more disconcerting, if not outright frightening.

Mannequins on the other hand (which I guess would be considered a subset of manikin) are more specifically descriptive of human models used for display purposes (such as clothing), but can also refer to real, live people who have been placed on display to model clothing themselves. And here I thought, for the sake of argument, that mannequins had to be non-living by way of their intended purpose. Presumably also so they don't take an interest in frightening away unsuspecting customers.

Suddenly it makes pictures like this one of young boys physically inspecting the groins of female mannequins for fully-functional female equipment appear much less cutely naive and much more... boyishly hopeful.

[Tirian]

And then there was merkin.