menial
Americanadjective
adjective
-
consisting of or occupied with work requiring little skill, esp domestic duties such as cleaning
-
of, involving, or befitting servants
-
servile
noun
-
a domestic servant
-
a servile person
Synonym Usage
See servile.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of menial
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English meynyal, from Anglo-French me(i)nial; see meiny, -al 1
Explanation
A menial task is anything that takes very little training, skill, or talent. Some people find it relaxing to do the menial chore of folding laundry. Go figure. The adjective menial comes from an Old French word, mensie, which means “household.” Many chores that get labeled as menial are domestic, but other jobs outside of the home are sometimes also considered menial: stuffing envelopes, data processing, repetitive assembly line work, brain surgery (OK, that last one is not considered menial; we were just checking to see if you were awake).
Vocabulary lists containing menial
The Handmaid's Tale
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Born a Crime
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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:
Student workers are shouldering bigger responsibilities, such as leading projects, as AI takes over menial tasks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
Elliot runs around LA doing Erika’s menial tasks until he drops everything at her beck and call.
From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2026
Sometimes he would give her menial tasks to do: answer the phone, show someone to a meeting room, or announce a guest.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
While robots may be able to take over menial tasks, humans will be needed to supervise and repair complex fleets.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 12, 2026
If I were to work, no matter at how menial a job, I could at least help her.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
If Snyder’s idea of running a franchise was to send menials scurrying for more whiskey ice, the other owners were happy to accept the free if sloppy proceeds.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 26, 2020
If our children become accustomed to bossing around their mechanical menials without so much as a please or a thank you, will they turn into adults we can’t stand?
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 19, 2018
“It would be menials who would win this war,” Juliet tells herself just before she’s plucked from the rank-and-file MI5 office staff stationed in the old Wormwood Scrubs prison at the beginning of the war.
From Slate ● Sep. 25, 2018
If schools such as Syracuse and Tennessee are having trouble scraping off the mud, it’s not just because they’ve been dirtied by a few menials.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 9, 2015
She belonged to a generation that treated policemen as menials, whatever their rank.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
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.
