Word: work Part of Speech: 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. Pronunciation: /wɜː(ɹ)k/, /wɜːk/, [wəːk], [wœːk], [wɔːk] 1. Employment. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: My work involves a lot of travel. Example: 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: He hasn’t come home yet; he’s still at work. 3. Employment. Labels: broadly, countable, uncountable Example: I want to go to the reunion concert, but I'm not sure if my work will give me the time off. 4. Employment. Labels: countable, dated, uncountable Example: 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: Holding a brick over your head is hard work. It takes a lot of work to write a dictionary. Example: 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: We know what we must do. Let's go to work. Example: We don't have much time. Let's get to work piling up those sandbags. 7. Effort. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: There's lots of work waiting for me at the office. 8. Effort. Labels: countable, euphemistic, uncountable Example: has had a lot of work done Example: 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. Labels: countable, slang, uncountable Example: putting in work 10. Effort. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: Work is done against friction to drag a bag along the ground. 11. Effort. Labels: broadly, countable, uncountable Example: 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. Labels: in-compounds, often, uncountable Example: There's a lot of guesswork involved. 13. Product; the result of effort. Labels: in-compounds, often, uncountable Example: 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. Labels: countable Example: It is a work of art. Example: the poetic works of Alexander Pope 15. Product; the result of effort. Labels: countable Example: 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. Labels: slang, uncountable 17. Ore before it is dressed. Labels: countable, uncountable 18. The equipment needed to inject a drug (syringes, needles, swabs etc.) Labels: countable, plural, plural-only, slang, uncountable Example: Tell me you're using clean works at least. Example: 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: All told, werk is about creativity, virtuosity, and a certain kind of mastery. Example: 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.