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)
-
drudged,
past participle, past
-
drudging
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
drudgesimple
-
drudgessimple
-
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
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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
Not just subjective, but a drudge at times.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 7, 2021
It’s a Cinderella story, minus everything but the drudge and the stepmother.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
In his line of work, the requirements of the season can at times seem like a drudge.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 10, 2021
Anyway, yesterday and the day before they needed someone else to do all these challenging tasks while they found another drudge to replace her.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
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
Even as the state of the economy began to improve, companies found they couldn’t shake their reliance on free labour; it was too easy to skimp by relying on a steady stream of unpaid drudges.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 27, 2018
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
But for one glorious summer in 1973, interns and drudges helped change America — as the cogs turning the wheel that would ultimately result in Richard Nixon’s resignation.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 14, 2017
She was sure her father would be horrified—she and Charlie drudges on someone else’s place.
From "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson
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
So instead, I applied 3% hydrogen peroxide, then scrubbed with a nylon brush like Cinderella drudging for her evil relatives.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 29, 2022
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
However breathless and hurried it made one's female relations in its upper reaches, and drudging in its lower, the very highest?
From The Pastor's Wife by Elizabeth von Arnim
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.
