Manmade describes something created by people rather than occurring naturally. A dam built across a river is manmade, while the river itself is natural. Skyscrapers, satellites, and smartphones are all manmade objects that wouldn't exist without human effort and ingenuity.

The word helps us distinguish between what nature produces and what humans create. A forest growing wild in the mountains is natural, but a tree farm planted in neat rows is manmade. A lake formed by glaciers thousands of years ago is natural, while a reservoir created by building a dam is manmade.

Sometimes the line gets blurry. A park might have natural trees and rocks, but the paths, benches, and planted flower beds are manmade additions. A manmade material like plastic doesn't exist anywhere in nature: people invented it by transforming oil and other substances through chemistry.

You'll also see this written as man-made (with a hyphen) or human-made, which some people prefer since people of all genders create things. All three terms mean exactly the same thing: something that exists because people designed it, built it, or brought it into being.