unmanned

adjective

un·​manned ˌən-ˈmand 

1

see usage paragraph below : not carrying, staffed, or performed by people : not manned

an unmanned railroad crossing

unmanned spaceflight

2

of a hawk : not trained

Usage of Manned and Unmanned

While manned and unmanned are still commonly used in news sources to describe spaceflights, 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 unmanned in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

An unmanned aerial vehicle, the drone has four propellers on an 18-by-17-inch base. —David W. Dunlap, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2025

Appearing in court in downtown LA this afternoon on a criminal misdemeanor and one count of unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft, the 56-year-old Akemann soon afterwards walked out the door on a $15,000 bond. —Dominic Patten, Deadline, 12 Feb. 2025

Debris from SpaceX Starship streaks through the sky SpaceX's Starship exploded during an unmanned test flight. —Greg Wehner, Fox News, 11 Feb. 2025

The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative seeks to deploy thousands of unmanned air- and seaborne vehicles. —Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1544, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for unmanned

• ampersand
• beforehand
• behindhand
• bottomland
• contraband
• countermand
• dixieland
• fairyland
• fatherland
• firebrand
• hinterland
• motherland

Kids Definition

unmanned

adjective

un·​manned ˌən-ˈmand 

ˈən-

: having no crew aboard

an unmanned spacecraft