Portrait of Man. A man is an adult male human.
Like most other male mammals, a man's genome typically inherits an X chromosome from his mother and a Y chromosome from his father. The male fetus produces larger amounts of androgens and smaller amounts of estrogens than a female fetus.
This difference in the relative amounts of these sex steroids is largely responsible for the physiological differences that distinguish men from women. During puberty, hormones which stimulate androgen production result in the development of secondary sexual characteristics, thus exhibiting greater differences between the sexes.
However, there are exceptions to the above for some transgender and intersex men. The English term man is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root *man-.
More directly, the word derives from Old English mann. The Old English form had a default meaning of adult male, though it could also signify a person of unspecified gender. The closely related Old English pronoun man was used just as it is in Modern German to designate one. In human beings, the sex of an individual is determined at the time of fertilization by the genetic material carried in the sperm cell. If a sperm cell carrying an X chromosome fertilizes the egg, the offspring will typically be female. On the other hand, if a sperm cell carrying a Y chromosome fertilizes the egg, the offspring will typically be male. Persons whose anat