work

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)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?”

   “And in euery worke that he began[…]he did it with all his heart, and prospered.”

   “Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew’s cap and bells.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Employment.

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

3. (broadly, countable, uncountable)Employment.

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

4. (countable, dated, uncountable)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. (countable, uncountable)Effort.

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

6. (countable, uncountable)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.”

   “The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.”

7. (countable, uncountable)Effort.

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

8. (countable, euphemistic, uncountable)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. (countable, slang, uncountable)Effort.

   “putting in work”

10. (countable, uncountable)Effort.

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

11. (broadly, countable, uncountable)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. (in-compounds, often, uncountable)Product; the result of effort.

    “There's a lot of guesswork involved.”

13. (in-compounds, often, uncountable)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. (countable)Product; the result of effort.

    “It is a work of art.”

    “the poetic works of Alexander Pope”

    “To leaue no Rubs nor Botches in the Worke:”

    “The haſty multitude / Admiring enter'd, and the work ſome praiſe / And ſome the Architect:”

    ““[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?[…]””

15. (countable)Product; the result of effort.

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

16. (slang, uncountable)The staging of events to appear as real.
17. (countable, uncountable)Ore before it is dressed.
18. (countable, plural, plural-only, slang, uncountable)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.”

    “If you buy new works, clean them before using them. If you share works, clean them before you or the next person uses them. Blood may be in your works even if you can't see it. Clean your works either with rubbing alcohol (available in drugstores), a household bleach solution (three tablespoons of bleach in a cup of water), or boiling water.”

    “While in San Francisco, where the AIDS crisis was particularly devastating, they saw numerous public awareness signs reading “Bleach Your Works” posted around the city, urging IV drug users to clean their needles with bleach to help staunch the spread of the disease.”

19. (countable, uncountable)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

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

   “I work in a national park.”

   “She works in the human resources department.”

   “He mostly works in logging but sometimes works in carpentry too.”

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

   “She works for Microsoft.”

   “He works for the President.”

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

   “I work closely with my Canadian counterparts.”

   “You work with computers, right?”

   “She works with the homeless people from the suburbs.”

6. (intransitive, transitive)To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “She works the night clubs.”

   “The salesman works the Midwest.”

7. (intransitive, transitive)To do a specific task by employing physical or mental powers.

   “She's working the phones.”

8. (intransitive)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.”

   “My plan didn't work.”

   “Once again, the WiFi isn't willing to work. When the guard comes to check tickets, I ask him if it ever works. He rolls his eyes and tells me it rarely does. He says I'll be lucky if I get it to connect. I give up trying.”

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

   “He worked the levers.”

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

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

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

    “She knows how to work the system.”

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

    “He is working his servants hard.”

16. (intransitive)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. (intransitive, transitive)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. (transitive)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. (transitive)To embroider with thread.
20. (intransitive)To ferment.
21. (transitive)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. (figuratively, intransitive)To influence.

    “They worked on her to join the group.”

23. (intransitive)To move in an agitated manner.

    “His fingers worked with tension.”

    “A ship works in a heavy sea.”

    “Here vex’d with Winter Storms Benacus raves, / Confus’d with working Sands and rolling Waves; / Rough and tumultuous like a Sea it lyes, / So loud the Tempeſt roars, ſo high the Billows riſe.”

24. (intransitive)To behave in a certain way when handled

    “This dough does not work easily.”

    “The soft metal works well.”

25. (ditransitive, poetic)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. (intransitive, obsolete)To hurt; to ache.

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

27. (slang, transitive)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. (intransitive)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.”

name

1. A surname.