man engine

English

WOTD – 19 November 2025

Etymology

Part of a man engine in the Oberharzer Bergwerksmuseum (Upper Harz Mining Museum) in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lower Saxony, Germany. Miners used to stand on the shelves shown, which would move up or down and enable them to step on to higher or lower platforms.

An illustration of a man engine in action.

From man (noun) +‎ engine (noun), referring to an engine for raising or lowering people.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmæn‿ˌɛnd͡ʒɪn/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: man en‧gine

Noun

man engine (plural man engines)

2. (historical) A mechanical lift for raising and lowering people through considerable distances; specifically (mining), a device by which miners ascend or descend in a shaft, consisting of a series of landings or sollars in the shaft and an equal number of shelves on a vertical rod which has an up and down motion equal to the distance between the successive landings. A person steps from a landing to a shelf and is raised or lowered to the next landing, upon which they then step, and so on, travelling by successive stages.

   Hypernyms: engine ('machine or device' sense), machine, device

   Coordinate term: water engine (machine to raise water out of a mine)

   • 1971, Susan Howatch, chapter 1, in Penmarric, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, part IV (Philip: 1914–1930: Truth and Falsehood), section 3, page 371:

     The man-engine was like some gigantic prehistoric monster. I'll never forget the first time I saw the man-engine at the Levant. The captain took me to the edge of the shaft and explained to me how the mechanism worked. "The wooden rod plunges, see—up, down, up, down. Up twelve feet, down twelve feet. There are steps all the way down at twelve-foot intervals on the rod, and corresponding platforms—sollars, we call them—on the sides of the shaft. The rod comes up, you step on, grab the handle—see?—and then the rod plunges down twelve feet and off you get onto the sollar. The rod swings up again, you get on the next step, drop twelve feet, step off onto the sollar, wait, step on, step off—and so on. It takes half an hour from top to bottom."

Alternative forms

• man-engine

Translations

mechanical lift for raising or lowering people

Dutch: fahrkunst f Finnish: askelmallinen kaivosmiesten nostin French: please add this translation if you can German: Fahrkunst (de) f Norwegian: Bokmål: farkunst m Nynorsk: please add this translation if you can Polish: winda skokowa f Russian: фа́ркунст m (fárkunst) Spanish: elevador de varilla minero m Ukrainian: фа́ркунст m (fárkunst)

Further reading

• man engine on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “man-engine, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2025.
• “man”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• engineman