noun
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hard or unpleasant work
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a rare word for piecework
Etymology
Origin of taskwork
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.
Were they to give up the memory of their fathers, and their attachment to their customary mode of life, in order to perform taskwork for the Egyptians and become Egyptians?
From The History of Antiquity, Vol. I (of VI) by Duncker, Max
Of course, if the parents are not devout, sincere, and affectionate,—if the whole affair on both sides is taskwork, or worse, hypocritical and false,—results must be very different indeed!
From The Story of John G. Paton Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals by Paton, James
In the midst of all the hardships of his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality and expansiveness of his affections.
From Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol 1 of 2) by Morley, John
Many of the later compositions even lack religious feeling, and seem to have been written as taskwork.
From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by Symonds, John Addington
For most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly 40Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
From Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems by Arnold, Matthew
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.
