workshop

American  

[wurk-shop] / ˈwɜrkˌʃɒp /

noun

• workshops
  plural

1. a room, group of rooms, or building in which work, especially mechanical work, is carried on.

2. a seminar, discussion group, or the like, that emphasizes exchange of ideas and the demonstration and application of techniques, skills, etc..

   a theater workshop; an opera workshop.

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verb (used with object)

workshopped, workshopping

1. to experiment with different versions of (a play or other performance), often in a collaborative environment.

   Most comedians workshop their jokes in smaller clubs before adding them to a polished routine.

workshop British  

/ ˈwɜːkˌʃɒp /

noun

1. a room or building in which manufacturing or other forms of manual work are carried on

2. a room in a private dwelling, school, etc, set aside for crafts

3. a group of people engaged in study or work on a creative project or subject

   a music workshop

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verb

1. (tr) to perform (a play) with no costumes, set, or musical accompaniment

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• postworkshop
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• workshops
  plural

Etymology

Origin of workshop

First recorded in 1555–65; work + shop

Explanation

A workshop is a place you go to work. If your mother enjoys carpentry, she might have a workshop in the basement where she can build furniture. Workshops are for making and fixing things like wooden furniture, cars, or mysterious inventions. A shorthand way to refer to a workshop is shop, as in the shop class offered in many high schools, which usually meets in a workshop. The noun workshop also means a course or meeting at which a work in progress — often a story, poem, or script — is discussed by a group of writers.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

workshop workshops workshopped workshopping

Across the courtyard in another workshop a handful of PoWs are making artificial Christmas trees, gaudy baubles strung from their machines.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

May I suggest a workshop on growing a conscience?

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2026

I devised a game: Every day I set foot in the garage, I needed to get rid of one thing on the shelves before I could enter the workshop to tinker.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 8, 2026

I now put away all tools and tidy the workbench when I’m done with my workshop for the day, even if I expect to come back to a project.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 8, 2026

He snapped his fingers several times, pointed at various wooden crates around the workshop.

From "The Last Last-Day-of-Summer" by Lamar Giles

Belinda Chang, a James Beard Award-winning sommelier in Chicago, said she has been approached by business school students and financial executives to lead workshops on how to navigate wine lists in corporate settings.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026

Now he’s married with seven kids and presides over something of an online personal-finance empire that includes an app, books, workshops and social-media communities.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026

While Gazan workshops do their best to repair computers, using spare parts from other damaged devices, there is a limit to what they can do.

From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026

Its proposal calls for preserving the space while adapting it into a shared civic center that could host live performances, film screenings, neighborhood council meetings, lectures, arts workshops and office space for community organizations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

Here on the western bank was the Thebes he knew, a vast jumble of workshops and laboratories known as the City of the Dead.

From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Under Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, the two vice chairs helped build support for a policy proposal they workshopped ahead of the meeting, giving markets a read on their thinking.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

Raicek has been busy in preproduction on her play “Fire Season,” which has already been workshopped with actors including Billy Crudup and Amanda Seyfried.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026

So Idle workshopped it — did the algebra, as he described it — and wound up with a new, zingier joke he preferred.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 23, 2026

Videos appeared to show a man telling demonstrators that the chant had been "workshopped" in Oxford.

From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2025

In the professional theater world, you would say they have been workshopped.

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove

Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister started workshopping their text messages to Trump, talking about which words they should render in capital letters.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026

A group of bondholders recently met in Washington to present to the world’s top economists and policymakers a proposal they had been workshopping for the past year.

From Barron's ● Jun. 23, 2026

Markwayne Mullin has a brilliantly dumb idea he’s workshopping.

From Slate ● May 30, 2026

Indeed, Cassidy’s road show, which he’s been workshopping sporadically since 2019, is a songs-and-stories affair in which he looks back on an eventful life he has yet to recount in a book.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2025

She and her followers are workshopping a rebranding of sorts to reflect their point of view.

From Salon ● Apr. 1, 2025

Related Words

• factory
• laboratory
• mill
• plant
• studio