manned

1. 1
   adjective

   Having people present as workers, operators, passengers, or crew.

   The lighthouse was manned around the clock during the storm season.

   Engineers compared the costs of manned and unmanned deep-sea expeditions.

   Similarcrewed, staffed, piloted

   Oppositeunmanned, uncrewed

   Note

   A participle that has settled into an adjective, and it works like a switch rather than a scale: a post is manned or it is not, never more manned. It sits naturally before nouns for stations, craft and posts. Trains Illustrated in 1960 writes of a manned signal cabin on the London Transport system. It comes from the verb's past form, which staffs a post with people of either sex.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of man.

   Soldiers manned the watchtowers throughout the long siege.

   The crew had manned every station by the time the alarm sounded.

   Note

   One spelling does the work of both past tense and participle, with the n doubled before -ed, so they manned the towers and the towers were manned share a form. The verb behind it supplies a post with staff of either sex, or takes up position to operate something. Older uses linger at the edges: a dated reflexive, to man oneself (compare man up), and an obsolete falconer's sense of accustoming a raptor to people.

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