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man-hour

man-hour

6 3.4
The work one person does in one hour
  • noun
  • /mænˈaʊər/
  • Specialized
translation icon : hora-hombre
  • The project was completed in less than 200 man-hours, which was impressive.
  • number of man-hours

Examples

  • There are man-hours spent generating the software for every project.

    Blog text (25)
  • We have over a thousand man-hours in this deal.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • Do you know how many man-hours that would take?

  • Production time per ship was related to the number of man-hours spent on each vessel.

    Academic text (2009)
  • The average number of man-hours continued to decrease to just over 500,000.

    Academic text (2009)
  • Among the five shipyards, the average number of man-hours required per ship in September 1943 was slightly more than 1.33 million.

    Academic text (2009)
  • From September 1943 to February 1945, Brunswick increased production by decreasing the amount of man-hours spent on each ship.

    Academic text (2009)
  • Just think of the unnecessary inconvenience and thousands of wasted man-hours spent enforcing a policy that no longer exists.

    Blog text (18)
  • That's 3,000 man-hours a week to sustain a circulation of under 10,000.

    Blog text (1)
  • I'm sure that an astonishing number of man-hours are lost worldwide due to having to rewrite and debug logic for so many different PLC brands.

    Blog text (25)

Synonyms

man hour
vsman-hour
  • Specialized
2 3.0

The amount of work one person does in one hour

is the basic single-person one-hour measure without planning emphasis
person hour
vsman-hour
  • Specialized
1 3.6

The amount of work one person does in one hour

is the same core measure but stated without record emphasis

Surface Forms

man-hour singular
man-hours plural

Morphology

man-hour = man + hour (transparent) = man + hour

The compound directly denotes the unit 'one person × one hour', so its meaning follows straightforwardly from 'man' + 'hour'.

Etymology

Man-hour joins man meaning 'a person' and hour meaning 'one hour', so it originally meant one person working for one hour. That's why when we say '100 man-hours' we mean the total work equal to one person working for 100 hours, or many people sharing that work over fewer hours.