drudge
Americannoun
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a person who does menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work.
-
a person who works in a routine, unimaginative way.
verb (used without object)
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drudges,
present (3rd person singular)
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drudged,
past participle, past
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drudging
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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drudgesimple
-
drudgessimple
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have drudgedperfect
-
has drudgedperfect
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am drudgingprogressive
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are drudgingprogressive
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is drudgingprogressive
-
have been drudgingperfect progressive
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has been drudgingperfect progressive
Past
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drudgedsimple
-
had drudgedperfect
-
was drudgingprogressive
-
were drudgingprogressive
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had been drudgingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of drudge
1485–95; compare OE man's name Drycghelm helmet maker, equivalent to drycg (akin to drēogan to work) + helm helm 2
Explanation
A drudge is someone who works very hard, especially at a job that is boring. To drudge is to work hard. One thing just about everyone has in common is complaining about work. Drudges have a little more to complain about than others: a drudge is someone whose job is difficult but isn't very interesting. Factories and coal mines are full of drudges: diligent folks doing work that isn't super-interesting. Such work is often called drudgery. Also, when you're working hard at anything, you can call it drudging. We all drudge when we have something to do that we would rather avoid.
Vocabulary lists containing drudge
Lyddie
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The Shakespeare Stealer
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The Merchant of Venice
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Instead of Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren playing picture-perfect Mitch and Melanie, the original presents Nat Hocken, a disabled war veteran who works as a farm laborer, and whose wife remains a nameless domestic drudge.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2025
Apart from drudge paperwork, Peter’s job is to answer a phone that “never rings” — except it does, and it’s Rose.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 23, 2023
In his line of work, the requirements of the season can at times seem like a drudge.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 10, 2021
Other reasons include fear of the coronavirus, lack of child care, an unwillingness to return to underpaid, drudge jobs and long-hauler covid victims who still are not well enough to work.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 12, 2021
Miss Preston was convinced that the best way to correct minor misconduct was a little drudgery, and housework was the pinnacle of drudge.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
The 40-year-old pop star and her attorney Mathew Rosengart have taken legal action against her father Jamie and sister Jamie Lynn as the court battle regarding her 13-year conservatorship drudges on.
From Fox News ● Jan. 19, 2022
To meet kind intentions with the suggestion that your wife’s friends become drudges because you choose not to handle the simple tasks of everyday life both insults them and reveals a great deal about you.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 4, 2021
They’re not the defense-first drudges they became under coach Darryl Sutter, but they’ve also learned that having freedom to be creative offensively and actually scoring aren’t connected.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 20, 2018
Great chimneys sprouted from the stadium floor and the once carefree yokels were transformed into drudges.
From Time ● Jul. 28, 2012
Despite the heavy silver cuffs and high, painful-looking bun that mark all of Blackcliff’s drudges, nothing about her says slave.
From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir
As I had drudged on with Cathy, I thought back to the infamous Nigerian prince scam, the great phishing attempt that seemingly defined the early internet.
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2025
Literally, as a snowstorm of historic proponents hit the Big Apple, and our intrepid Midge drudged forward resolutely and inappropriately dressed.
From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2023
Taillon also drudged through his previous start, allowing six runs over 5 2/3 innings against Houston in a game New York came back to win 7-6.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 29, 2022
As the bout drudged on, both fighters appeared to start getting gassed.
From Fox News ● Oct. 10, 2021
While de Vries was still knee-deep in the study of plant hybrids in the spring of 1900, a friend sent him a copy of an old paper drudged up from the friend’s library.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
But if the new lines go through for 2026, they could pit long-serving older members of the Texas delegation against younger newcomers, drudging up existing tensions in the Democratic Party over age and seniority.
From Salon ● Aug. 3, 2025
Those efforts all have something in common: They use software to take on drudging tasks like transcribing and initial data-gathering so that journalists have more time to do more intensive reporting.
From Slate ● Feb. 26, 2023
One fan of the drudging quarterback competition that dominated Denver’s offseason was Jeudy because it helped him focus as he worked to cut down on the dropped passes that plagued him as a rookie.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 1, 2021
The defense tried to discredit Constand and the other women, attacking their credibility and drudging up their past misbehaviors.
From The Verge ● Apr. 26, 2018
He came out to Michigan when it was a wilderness, to make his fortune by clearing land at ten dollars an acre, and while he was drudging he expected to have a little fun.
From Ocean to Ocean on Horseback Being the Story of a Tour in the Saddle from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with Especial Reference to the Early History and Devel by Willard W. Glazier
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
