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 non-gender-specific 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
Meanwhile, Tesla has obtained a permit to operate a ride-hailing business in Texas, and is testing a manned robotaxi service in Austin and another in San Francisco.
—
Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 2 Sep. 2025
The commercial spaceflight company that Elon Musk founded in 2002 has seen mixed results for one of its flagship programs aimed to fulfill the billionaire's goals for manned missions to Mars.
—Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 26 Aug. 2025
Beyond that, there are four manned cameras in the villa as well as mobile rail cameras that are remotely operated on a railway track.
—Tayler Adigun, Architectural Digest, 24 Aug. 2025
Drones have become essential to modern militaries, providing surveillance, precision strike, and training capabilities at a lower cost than manned aircraft.
—Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering, 18 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for manned
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Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 2 Sep. 2025
The commercial spaceflight company that Elon Musk founded in 2002 has seen mixed results for one of its flagship programs aimed to fulfill the billionaire's goals for manned missions to Mars.
—Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 26 Aug. 2025
Beyond that, there are four manned cameras in the villa as well as mobile rail cameras that are remotely operated on a railway track.
—Tayler Adigun, Architectural Digest, 24 Aug. 2025
Drones have become essential to modern militaries, providing surveillance, precision strike, and training capabilities at a lower cost than manned aircraft.
—Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering, 18 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for manned
Cite this Entry
“Manned.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manned. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.
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manned
adjective
: carrying or performed by a person
manned spaceflight
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