From Latin 'manifestus' (palpable), probably 'manus' (hand) + 'festus' (struck) — so obvious your hand seizes it.
Clear or obvious to the eye or mind (adjective); to display or show a quality or feeling by one's acts or appearance (verb); a document listing a ship's or aircraft's passengers or cargo (noun).
From Latin 'manifestus' (caught in the act, palpable, obvious), probably from 'manus' (hand) + '-festus' (struck, seized, related to 'offendere,' to strike against), from Proto-Indo-European *man- (hand) + *gʷhen- (to strike). The literal sense is 'struck by hand' or 'caught by the hand' — something so obvious it is as if you have seized it physically. The noun sense (a cargo list) comes
The phrase 'Manifest Destiny' — the 19th-century American belief that westward expansion was obvious and inevitable — uses 'manifest' in its strongest sense: not merely possible but palpable, caught by the hand, unavoidable. The phrase was coined by journalist John L. O'Sullivan in 1845 and became the ideological justification for continental expansion.
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