mannkyns

Mannkyns is a historical term found in some Swedish and Old Norse texts that refers to the male sex or the male kind. The form combines elements akin to man (person, man) and kyn/kyn (race, kind, lineage), reflecting a binary, gendered way of categorizing humans that was common in older Germanic languages. In modern standard Swedish the term is largely obsolete.

In usage, mannkyns tends to appear in philological, historical, or theological discussions, or in translations of Latin terms that denote the masculine genus. It may surface in legal, genealogical, or scholastic writings from earlier centuries, where concepts of gender and kinship were framed differently from today. The exact meaning within a given text is often determined by context, and scholars may distinguish it from more contemporary terms for gender or sex.

Because of its antiquated status, occurrences of mannkyns require careful interpretation to ascertain whether they refer to the male sex, male persons, or a masculine lineage, and how they relate to other terms in the same passage. Its use today is primarily of interest to historians of language and readers studying historical gender concepts. See also: gender, masculinity, sex, Swedish language history.