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
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
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The Things They Carried
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
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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.
Drill, 52, 63 Drudgery, 218 Education, intellectual, 57, 62; aim of, 143 f.,
From How We Think by Dewey, John
In Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty, Roosevelt's Strenuous Life, and Gannett's Blessed be Drudgery, we get valuable notes; and Carlyle has many, especially ID the latter chapters of Sartor Resartm.
From Problems of Conduct by Drake, Durant
For to quiet and satisfy all scrupulous Consciences, is as great a Drudgery as it is to write in Defence of Miracles.
From A Letter to Dion by Viner, Jacob
A very stimulating booklet is "Blessed be Drudgery"; but one sentence spoils it for our use, since it places Jesus at the end of a list of philosophers at whose head stands Herbert Spencer.
From Sunday-School Success A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and Officers by Wells, Amos R.
Add to this the pensive Drudgery in Building, and constant grasping Aerial Trowels, distracts and shatters the Mind, and the fond Builder of Babells is often cursed with an incoherent Diversity and Confusion of Thoughts.
From The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Addison, Joseph
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.
