see usage paragraph below
: carrying, staffed, or performed by one or more people
a manned security booth
manned spaceflight
a manned mission
Usage of Manned and Unmanned
While manned and unmanned are still commonly used in news sources to describe spaceflights with and without human crews, respectively, NASA has since the early 21st century used and prescribed gender-neutral terms, preferring such descriptors as human, piloted, and crewed for the former, and unpiloted and uncrewed for the latter.
Examples of manned in a Sentence
a manned mission to the moon
Recent Examples on the Web
Beyond the cybersecurity advantage, the Celeste team argues that larger, lightweight drones can integrate more readily with manned aviation.
—
Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 14 May 2026
The team also used drones for critical back lighting to get full 360 coverage, although the drones only had a 12-minute runtime, so this required careful coordination with the performers and manned camera crew.
—ArsTechnica, 13 May 2026
With Witt a year older, Volpe handled second, while CJ Abrams — another future big league shortstop — manned center.
—Gary Phillips, New York Daily News, 13 May 2026
By comparison, a manned destroyer costs $700,000 a day.
—Arkansas Online, 26 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for manned
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Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 14 May 2026
The team also used drones for critical back lighting to get full 360 coverage, although the drones only had a 12-minute runtime, so this required careful coordination with the performers and manned camera crew.
—ArsTechnica, 13 May 2026
With Witt a year older, Volpe handled second, while CJ Abrams — another future big league shortstop — manned center.
—Gary Phillips, New York Daily News, 13 May 2026
By comparison, a manned destroyer costs $700,000 a day.
—Arkansas Online, 26 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for manned
Cite this Entry
“Manned.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manned. Accessed 20 May. 2026.
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manned
adjective
: carrying or performed by a person
manned spaceflight
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