manipulation

Influence exerted on minds and situations rather than on objects. It is not automatically an accusation: a counselor's positive psychological manipulation shows a qualifier can turn it benign. Subtle is a natural companion. In the plural it names individual maneuvers, as when someone orchestrates a rival's downfall through subtle manipulations. Unqualified, the word leaves the reader to judge whether the influence was fair.

The broad, neutral sense: handling or working something, from a deck of cards to a water crane, with no trickery implied. The Railway Magazine of 1956 uses it for operating equipment on a locomotive tender. As a mass noun it names the activity (the manipulation of the crane). In the plural it counts separate acts, and a dealer's manipulations already lean toward the scheming sense. The word came into English through French from Latin manipulus.

Here the hands are the instrument and the body is the material. It is a clinician's word, at home in chiropractic, osteopathy and physiotherapy. It usually works as a mass noun measured in time or sessions, as in a few minutes of manipulation each week. It often names its target: spinal manipulation, manipulation of the shoulder. In clinical use it carries none of the suspicion of the psychological sense.