drudgery

American  

[druhj-uh-ree] / ˈdrʌdʒ ə ri /

noun

plural

drudgeries

1. menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work.

---

drudgery British  

/ ˈdrʌdʒərɪ /

noun

1. hard, menial, and monotonous work

---

Usage

What are other ways to say drudgery?

Drudgery refers to menial, distasteful, or hard work. How is drudgery different from work, labor, or toil? Find out on Thesaurus.com.

Etymology

Origin of drudgery

First recorded in 1540–50; drudge + -ery

Explanation

If you’ve ever had to do the laundry, wash the dishes, make the meals, change the bedding, vacuum the house, and clean the bathrooms day after day, you’ve experienced drudgery. Drudgery is hard, mindless, backbreaking work. When you say the word drudgery, you can almost feel the hard, plodding work that it describes. You have to put some effort into saying the dr- sound. Then, as soon as you get through the breathy -u-, you’ve got two more hard sounds in -dg- and -er- before you get another break with the final vowel sound. Just as you might drag yourself doing those repetitive, grinding chores, you have to drag your way through pronouncing the word.

Example Sentences

People who ignore or undervalue prompting will remain trapped in the drudgery of manual operations, where data points must be located and assembled.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 25, 2026

But for Liu, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, AI’s ability to perform this drudgery is beside the point.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 26, 2025

But it wakes us up to the need for those solutions, and it turns our private drudgery into communal solidarity and gives us back the only commodity that ever really mattered: our time.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025

You’ll root for the characters to vanquish him only because then the drudgery might finally end.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 16, 2025

When her mother said it, it reeked of drudgery: waiting tables, washing dishes, cleaning floors.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng