managery

English

Etymology

Compare Old French menagerie, mesnagerie. See manage and compare menagerie.

Noun

managery (countable and uncountable, plural manageries)

1. Management; manner of using; conduct; direction.
   • 1716, Thomas Browne, edited by Samuel Johnson, Christian Morals‎^[1], 2nd edition, London: J. Payne, published 1756, Part I, p. 11:

     Show thy art in honesty, and lose not thy virtue by the bad managery of it.

2. Husbandry; economy; frugality.
   • 1724, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, Volume I, Book II: The History of the Reign of King Charles II, p. 330,^[2]

     But they found […] , to their cost, that their unreasonable managery in that particular drew upon them an expence of many millions […]

3. (obsolete) Something requiring management; a project.
   • 1742, Roger North, The Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North‎^[3], London: John Whiston, page 182:

     […] if a Man has several Manageries upon his Hands, and the Books and Papers of them lie together, Confusion is apt to grow, not only among them but, in his Head […]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “managery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)