drudgery
Americannoun
noun
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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of drudgery
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.
Vocabulary lists containing drudgery
Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
The Things They Carried
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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:
The psychological damage from the labor camp coupled with the oppression of the Communist regime infiltrated the house, where her mother’s constant cleaning and other drudgery was a way of maintaining sanity and order.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
The song opens with Battle fighting against the drudgery of his nine-to-five job.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2026
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
The drudgery theme was explored already in the silent-movie era.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 29, 2025
The cyclotron’s celebrity as a technological phenomenon fed on itself, fueling its inventor’s preference for engineering and salesmanship over the tedious drudgery of hard science.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
But Roth is concerned that some patients may be so eager to escape the drudgeries of dialysis that they are willing to accept a sub-par kidney.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 17, 2020
I loved these tales of going up in these famous fighters and bombers on test runs, of the camaraderie on base, even the drudgeries of guard duty or rushing to breakfast in the mess.
From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2020
“Welfare” evokes poverty as a trial of rote drudgeries.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 2, 2019
Made me invincible to the drudgeries of working in advertising and the ever-present Void of living in general.”
From Slate ● Jul. 19, 2018
We tend to count the diseases conquered, the planets explored, the drudgeries banished, and to assert that the greater good is served by seeing things our way.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
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.
