unmanned

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ manned.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ʌnˈmænd/
Audio (US): (file)
Rhymes: -ænd

Adjective

unmanned (not comparable)

Not operated by a person or a crew.
Synonyms: uncrewed, crewless

Antonyms: manned, crewed

Coordinate term: unpiloted (not synonymous; pilots may be either remote or irrelevant)
- 2013 June 7, Ed Pilkington, “‘Killer robots’ should be banned in advance, UN told”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 6:
  In his submission to the UN, [Christof] Heyns points to the experience of drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles were intended initially only for surveillance, and their use for offensive purposes was prohibited, yet once strategists realised their perceived advantages as a means of carrying out _targeted killings, all objections were swept out of the way.
an automated e-mail message sent from an unmanned mailbox
Of a bird of prey: not accustomed to the presence of human beings.
Coordinate term: undomesticated

Usage notes

The sense of man involved is not necessarily the sex-specific sense, but to avoid any interpretation involving sexism, the terms uncrewed and crewed are unambiguous. This distinction is parallel with man/humans (for example, since the dawn of man versus since the dawn of humans).

Translations

not operated by a person or a crew

Armenian: անօդաչու (hy) (anōdačʻu)
Bulgarian: безпилотен (bezpiloten)
Danish: ubemannet
Dutch: onbemand (nl)
Finnish: miehittämätön (fi)
French: sans équipage
German: unbemannt (de)
Greek: μη επανδρωμένος m (mi epandroménos)
Hungarian: legénység nélküli
Indonesian: nirawak (id)
Japanese: 無人 (ja) (mujin)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: ubemannet, ubemanna

Nynorsk: ubemanna
Polish: bezzałogowy (pl)
Portuguese: não tripulado
Russian: беспило́тный (ru) (bespilótnyj) (aviation)
Swedish: obemannad (sv)
Turkish: insansız (tr)
Ukrainian: безпіло́тний (uk) (bezpilótnyj) (aviation)

Verb

unmanned

simple past and past participle of unman