man-day
Americannoun
Usage
What does man-day mean? Man-day is a unit of measurement referring to the amount of work that one person does in one day. Man-day is often used in accounting and other business contexts, especially when estimating and budgeting for how much work it will take to complete a project, as well as how long it will take and how much it will cost. For example, if a team of three people takes two working days to finish a project, it takes six man-days. Of course, man-days don’t just count work done by men. A neutral alternative term for man-day is person-day. Example: We estimate that it will take about 150 man-days to complete the walkway, so make sure we budget for that.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of man-day
First recorded in 1920–25
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.
See Examples For:
They had 40 customers, paying from $100 a man-day for special one-shot jobs to $750 a month on yearly or seasonal contracts.
From Time Magazine Archive
In Kentucky, for example, productivity has dropped from 23.6 tons of coal mined per man-day in 1969 to 16.9 tons in 1977; in Illinois, the plunge has been from 26.4 tons to 14.9 tons.
From Time Magazine Archive
The number of man-days lost to stoppages plunged - from 33.6 million in 1974 to just 2.8 million in 1976.
From BBC ● Jun. 24, 2025
Allen and his ilk have worked most weekends to get the work done, logging about 35 man-days on the project that is, by lookout standards, some rather light lifting, he says.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 23, 2016
Microsoft estimates that building the virus likely took 10,000 man-days of labor by top-rank software engineers.
From Newsweek ● Dec. 13, 2010
At least 60 companies have shut down, and 3 million man-days of work have already been lost.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the years 1967 to 1969, these members, on the average, contributed only from 139 to 142 man-days per year.
From Area Handbook for Romania by Bernier, Donald W.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
