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man-hour

American  
[man-ouuhr, -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


man-hour British  

noun

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

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of man-hour

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

In his response, Gen. Milley said they came to the man-hour estimate by assuming each service member in a force of 2.46 million spent about two hours in the training.

From Washington Times • Feb. 15, 2022

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

At last, he turned to the separate pile of directives, production and man-hour reports, and other papers which demanded more attention than the routine paper.

From Final Weapon by Leydenfrost, Alexander