man-hour

American  

[man-ou^uhr, -ou-er] / ˈmænˌaʊər, -ˌaʊ ər /

noun

1. a unit of measurement, especially in accountancy, based on an ideal amount of work accomplished by one person in an hour. man-hr

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man-hour British  

noun

1. a unit for measuring work in industry, equal to the work done by one man in one hour

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Etymology

Origin of man-hour

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

The Times reported earlier this year on the backlog problem at USCIS, including a secret study completed last year that found the agency had an 11 million man-hour work backlog.

From Washington Times • Sep. 17, 2021

You see that persistence in Gerard, someone who will spare no cost or man-hour to pursue his version of justice — even when everyone thinks his quarry is dead.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 13, 2020

Shelton was the kind of manager who could recite the details involved in every step of production, from the density of breeding cages to the number of birds processed per man-hour.

From The New Yorker • May 1, 2017

The agency has been pushing its contractors to adopt the man-hour approach over their current point system, he said, so that it can directly compare the federal investigators’ output to the contractors’.

From Washington Post • Jun. 14, 2015

Since 1950 our agricultural output per man-hour has actually doubled!

From State of the Union Address by Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald)