brainwork

American  

[breyn-wurk] / ˈbreɪnˌwɜrk /

noun

1. work or effort consisting principally or largely of mental activity, thought, imagination, etc., as opposed to physical or manual work.

2. the effort of thought, reasoning, planning, or the like; ordered or directed thinking.

   Solving problems is a form of brainwork.

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Etymology

Origin of brainwork

First recorded in 1835–45; brain + work

Example Sentences

There is relief, intoxication, even temporary salvation in this kind of brainwork that so differs from the frontal lobe activities that dominate the rest of my day.

From Salon • Mar. 21, 2020

An idea is neither the words that express it nor the brainwork that conceives it: These are only the vehicles that transport the immaterial thought into the material world.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 29, 2016

Summer is when readers are traditionally supposed to reach for something undemanding: easy reads that require little brainwork as we lounge in the sun.

From The Guardian • Jul. 24, 2015

After Hiroshima, that feeling of separation between everyday people and the intellectuals employed to think up the bomb got bigger, amplified by the terrifying consequences of all that brainwork.

From Slate • Apr. 5, 2013

They are listening, analyzing, visualizing, sequencing, and applying concentrated brainwork to understand what they are singing.

From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin