work

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-West Germanic *werk Old English weorc Middle English werk English work From Middle English work, werk, from Old English weorc, from Proto-West Germanic *werk, from Proto-Germanic *werką (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom (“work”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- (“to make”). Cognates Cognate with Scots wark (“work”), North Frisian werk (“work”), Saterland Frisian Wierk (“work”), West Frisian wurk (“work”), Dutch werk (“work”), German Werk (“work”), German Low German Wark (“work”), Luxembourgish Wierk (“work”), Danish værk (“work”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish verk (“work”); also Breton ober (“to do, make”), Cornish gul, gwul (“to do, make”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic fearg (“anger”), Manx ferg (“anger”), Pictish ᚒᚏᚏᚐᚉᚈ (urract, “he made”), Welsh gwneud, neud (“to do, make”), Greek έργο (érgo, “work”), Albanian argëtim (“entertainment; fun, pleasure”), argëtoj (“to amuse, entertain”), Lithuanian váržas (“fish snaring net”), Macedonian врша (vrša, “fish-trap”), Polish wiersza (“fish-trap”), Russian and Ukrainian ве́рша (vérša, “fish-trap”), Serbo-Croatian вр̑ша, vȓša (“fish-trap”), Slovak and Slovene vrša (“fish-trap”), Aghwan 𐔱𐕒𐕙𐔵 (borz, “labour, work”), Armenian գործ (gorc, “work”), Northern Kurdish werz (“bed, field, patch; season”), Avestan 𐬬𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬰 (vər^əz, “to do, work”), Persian ورز (varz, “art, craft, trade”), ورزه (varze, “art, profession, trade”), ورزیدن (varzidan, “to exercise; to train; to work”), Tocharian B warkṣäl (“energy, power, strength”). English cognates include bulwark, boulevard, energy, erg, georgic, liturgy, metallurgy, organ, surgeon, wright. Doublet of erg and ergon.

1. Employment.

   “My work involves a lot of travel.”

   “Come on Neriſſa, I haue worke in hand / That you yet know not of; wee'll ſee our husbands / Before they thinke of vs?”

2. Employment.

   “He hasn’t come home yet; he’s still at work.”

3. Employment.

   “I want to go to the reunion concert, but I'm not sure if my work will give me the time off.”

4. Employment.

   “In trials of a Martin furnace in a steel work at Remscheiden, Germany, a lining of zirconia was found in good condition after […]”

5. Effort.

   “Holding a brick over your head is hard work. It takes a lot of work to write a dictionary.”

   “Fifteen years of hard work went into the property's creation, which was undertaken by a legion of architects, designers, preservation and restoration experts, engineers, consultants, and artists.”

6. Effort.

   “We know what we must do. Let's go to work.”

   “We don't have much time. Let's get to work piling up those sandbags.”

7. Effort.

   “There's lots of work waiting for me at the office.”

8. Effort.

   “has had a lot of work done”

   “Luckily, our eyes have grown accustomed after decades of Botox, fillers and extreme “work” going mainstream, so we don’t notice the weirdness and read it instead as maximum hotness. Thank you, progress!”

9. Effort.

   “putting in work”

10. Effort.

    “Work is done against friction to drag a bag along the ground.”

11. Effort.

    “Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning "vortex", and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.”

12. Product; the result of effort.

    “There's a lot of guesswork involved.”

13. Product; the result of effort.

    “We've got some paperwork to do before we can get started. The piece was decorated with intricate filigree work.”

14. Product; the result of effort.

    “It is a work of art.”

    “the poetic works of Alexander Pope”

15. Product; the result of effort.

    “William the Conqueror fortified many castles, throwing up new ramparts, bastions and all manner of works.”

16. The staging of events to appear as real.
17. Ore before it is dressed.
18. The equipment needed to inject a drug (syringes, needles, swabs etc.)

    “Tell me you're using clean works at least.”

    “He gave me a sour look. “All right is it? Well, you shoot some then.” I cooked up a grain and got out my works ready to take the shot.”

19. The confident attitude of a drag queen.

    “All told, werk is about creativity, virtuosity, and a certain kind of mastery.”

    “If the voice coming out of my body is legibly male, it complicates my presence. The work starts to approach that mysterious state of werq.”

verb

Etymology: From Middle English werken and worchen, from Old English wyrċan and wircan (Mercian), from Proto-Germanic *wurkijaną (“to work”), from Proto-Indo-European *wr̥ǵyéti (“to be working, to be at work”), from the root *werǵ-. Cognate with Old Frisian werka, wirka, Old Saxon wirkian, Low German warken, Dutch werken, Old High German wurken (German wirken, werken and werkeln), Old Norse yrkja and orka, (Swedish yrka and orka), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌺𐌾𐌰𐌽 (waurkjan).

1. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “He's working in a bar.”

   “The world’s favorite airport and Asian mega-hub, Singapore Changi, is eagerly working towards opening its new Jewel and Terminal 5.”

2. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “I work in a national park.”

   “She works in the human resources department.”

3. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.”

   “I work as a cleaner.”

4. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “She works for Microsoft.”

   “He works for the President.”

5. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “I work closely with my Canadian counterparts.”

   “You work with computers, right?”

6. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “She works the night clubs.”

   “The salesman works the Midwest.”

7. To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “She's working the phones.”

8. To function correctly; to act as intended; to achieve the goal designed for.

   “He pointed at the car and asked, "Does it work"?”

   “He looked at the bottle of pain pills, wondering if they would work.”

9. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

   “He worked the levers.”

10. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “The mine was worked until the last scrap of ore had been extracted.”

    “They were told of a ſilver mine, that had been worked by the Spaniards, ſomewhere in the Healthſhire Hills, in St. Catharine; but they were not able to diſcover it.”

11. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “He used pliers to work the wire into shape.”

12. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “The rock musician worked the crowd of young girls into a frenzy.”

    “"Still, boozers can be worked sometimes. Most people can, if you encourage their kink. One old woman staked me for three months because she got such a kick out of scandalmongering the neighbours to me."”

13. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “She knows how to work the system.”

14. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “I cannot work a miracle.”

    “Failure to hold the annual meeting, or to otherwise conduct the business of the annual meeting, shall not work a forfeiture or dissolution of the Cooperative.”

15. To cause to operate, be productive, behave a certain way, or happen.

    “He is working his servants hard.”

16. To move or progress slowly or with difficulty; to proceed with effort.

    “to work into the earth”

    “We worked back again and picked up our intended route, but we did not find the clear run I had hoped for.”

17. To move or progress slowly or with difficulty; to proceed with effort.

    “He worked his way through the crowd.”

    “The dye worked its way through.”

18. To cause to move slowly or with difficulty.

    “Using some tweezers, she worked the bee sting out of her hand.”

    “So the pure limpid Stream, when foul with Stains / Of ruſhing Torrents, and deſcending Rains, / Work’s it ſelf clear, and as it runs, refines; / ’Till by Degrees, the floating Mirrour ſhines, / […]”

19. To embroider with thread.
20. To ferment.
21. To cause to ferment.

    “For Inanimate Things, you may trie the Force of Imagination, vpon Staying the Working of Beere, when the Barme is put in; Or vpon the Comming of Butter, or Cheeſe, after the Cherming, or the Rennet bee put in.”

22. To influence.

    “They worked on her to join the group.”

23. To move in an agitated manner.

    “His fingers worked with tension.”

    “A ship works in a heavy sea.”

24. To behave in a certain way when handled

    “This dough does not work easily.”

    “The soft metal works well.”

25. To cause (someone) to feel (something); to do unto somebody (something, whether good or bad).

    “And indeed I blamed myself and sore repented me of having taken compassion on him and continued in this condition, suffering fatigue not to be described, till I said to myself, “I wrought him a weal and he requited me with my ill; by Allah, never more will I do any man a service so long as I live!””

    “So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore; / And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore; / That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe; / Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."”

26. To hurt; to ache.

    “‘I wolde hit were so,’ seyde the Kynge, ‘but I may nat stonde, my hede worchys so—’”

27. To pull off; to wear, perform, etc. successfully or to advantage.

    “I would have never thought those pieces would go together, but she is working it like nobody's business.”

28. To perform with a confident attitude, particularly as a drag queen.

    “Plus, all that gym work means you've got muscles for days. You gotta werk it, babe." She puts a swish and swing into her next few steps before she bursts out laughing, and I have to join in.”

    “Today, almost three decades later, the sentence, "You better work" from the song is used on a daily basis.”