The Sanskrit term Manīṣā can be transliterated into English as Manisa or Manisha.
The noun Manisha appears as early as the Rigveda Samhita and also in the Aitareya Upanishad, which is a part of the second book of Aitareya Aranyaka of Rigveda.
And in the Rigveda Samhita, Manisha in most of the places is used to mean, ‘praise’.
However, both Adi Shankaracharya and Sayanacharya have stated that Manisha means "the independence of intellect (mati)’.
Therefore, Manisha can be deciphered as "the intelligence which is capable of independent logical reasoning and rational analysis in determining truth or facts".