[Ads-l] Manually--now also by foot?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Jul 22 15:13:11 UTC 2015


> On Jul 22, 2015, at 4:30 AM, Margaret Lee <0000006730deb3bf-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Subaru  has released a notice to owners of their Outback, Crosstrek, and Legacy models that the vehicles' Eyesight Driver Assist System is now a safety hazard due to a "brake lamp switch failure."  Eyesight is a safety device that is supposed to warn the driver of an imminent frontal collision and automatically stop the vehicle. In light of this safety defect, the driver will now have to "manually apply the brake pedal,"  according to the notice.  Does _manually_  now also mean performed by the foot?

If not, it sounds *extremely* inconvenient for the driver.  (But at least for me, "manually" has already generalized to "non-automatically" or "in a one-by-one-manner" in electronic contexts, e.g. having to change the footnote numbers in a document "manually" as opposed to using a global command. (You're still using the computer  The OED sort of alludes to this extended use, but not as explicitly as they might, in the "later use" half of the basic definition:

manually, adv.
1a. With or using the hand or hands; by manual operation or intervention. In later use: by human effort rather than by automatic, electronic, etc., means.

And the one cite still does involve a contrast between electronic and human energy, rather than between using a less automatized rather than a more automatized method:

1991   What Personal Computer Dec. 105/3   This meant the computer-generated statement of accounts couldn't be used, and had to be recalculated manually.

Is there another dictionary that contains the relevant meaning? (AHD doesn't.)  Notice that the use of "manually" I have in mind doesn't even need to involve the use of fingers or hands on a keyboard:

"Hawking couldn't get the program to work, so he had to do the computation on his laptop manually", where neither method involves using his fingers but the two differ in degree of automaticity.  

LH

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