The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (17 December 2009):

Unix manual page
man
man page
Unix man page

    (Or "man page") A part of Unix's
   extensive on-line documentation.  To read a manual page, type

   	man [-s
] 

   at a shell prompt, e.g. "man ftp" (the section number can
   usually be omitted).  Pages are traditionally referred to
   using the notation "page(section)", e.g. ftp(1).

   Under SunOS (which is fairly typical), Section 1 covers
   commands, 2 system calls, 3 C library routines, 4 devices
   and networks, 5 file formats, 6 games and demos, 7
   miscellaneous, 8 system administration.  Each section has an
   introduction which can be obtained with, e.g., "man 2 intro".

   Manual pages are stored as nroff source files.  Formatted
   versions are also usually cached.

   Unix manual page: man(1).

   A Linux man gateway (http://foldoc.org/man.cgi).

   A Solaris man gateway
   (http://medsch.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/pdm/man.pl).

   (2000-03-13)