Manned

How to spell manned

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce manned

What does manned mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'to man': to have staffed or operated a station, post, or piece of equipment with people.

Manned in a sentence

• The reception desk was manned around the clock during the conference.

• Volunteers manned the telephones throughout the charity appeal.

Where does manned come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'to man', which grew out of the Old English noun mann, meaning simply 'a human being' or 'person'. From early times English speakers turned that noun into a verb meaning 'to furnish with people', especially to supply a ship, fort, or post with the workers or fighters needed to run it. The naval sense was particularly strong: a vessel had to be 'manned' before it could sail, and that usage carried the word into modern industry and space travel, as in a 'manned mission'. The doubled n in the spelling is the regular English rule that a short stressed vowel followed by a single consonant doubles that consonant before -ed, the same pattern seen in 'planned' and 'banned'. Because the base word 'man' has only one n, writers sometimes forget to add the second one when forming the past tense.

How the word is built

• man (from Old English mann: person, here used as a verb meaning to staff or operate)
• -ned (past tense, the final n doubled before the suffix)