Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew’s cap and bells.
Holding a brick over your head is hard work. It takes a lot of work to write a dictionary.
2026 May, Julie Coe, “The Rest is History”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83, number 4, page 36:
Fifteen years of hard work went into the property's creation, which was undertaken by a legion of architects, designers, preservation and restoration experts, engineers, consultants, and artists.
The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.
Something on which effort is expended.
There's lots of work waiting for me at the office.
Luckily, our eyes have grown accustomed after decades of Botox, fillers and extreme “work” going mainstream, so we don’t notice the weirdness and read it instead as maximum hotness. Thank you, progress!
Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning "vortex", and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.
1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost.[…], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker[…]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter[…]; [a]nd Matthias Walker,[…], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books:[…], London: Basil Montagu Pickering[…], 1873, →OCLC, lines 730–732:
The haſty multitude / Admiring enter'd, and the work ſome praiſe / And ſome the Architect:
“[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?[…]”
2020 February 10, Barbara Lane, “Original or translated? Great literature takes both forms”, in San Francisco Chronicle[2]:
In “Why Translation Matters,” Edith Grossman, the highly acclaimed translator of many of Latin America’s most important writers (Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ariel Dorfman), argues that translators create a new work.
He gave me a sour look. “All right is it? Well, you shoot some then.” I cooked up a grain and got out my works ready to take the shot.
1996, Paul Harding Douglas with Laura Pinsky, The Essential AIDS Fact Book, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 25:
If you buy new works, clean them before using them. If you share works, clean them before you or the next person uses them. Blood may be in your works even if you can't see it. Clean your works either with rubbing alcohol (available in drugstores), a household bleach solution (three tablespoons of bleach in a cup of water), or boiling water.
2009, Gillian G. Gaar, The Rough Guide to Nirvana[3], Rough Guides UK, →ISBN:
While in San Francisco, where the AIDS crisis was particularly devastating, they saw numerous public awareness signs reading “Bleach Your Works” posted around the city, urging IV drug users to clean their needles with bleach to help staunch the spread of the disease.
2018 December 6, Matt Falcus, “16 new airports and terminals we can’t wait to fly into”, in CNN[4], Atlanta, Ga.: Warner Bros. Discovery, archived from the original on 25 April 2025:
The world’s favorite airport and Asian mega-hub, Singapore Changi, is eagerly working towards opening its new Jewel and Terminal 5.
Said of one's workplace (building), or one's department, or one's trade (sphere of business) [withinorat].
I work in a national park.
She works in the human resources department.
He mostly works in logging but sometimes works in carpentry too.
This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.
I work as a cleaner.
Said of a company or individual who employs [withfor].
The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about "creating compelling content", or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing", "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention. Partly, this is a result of how online advertising has traditionally worked: advertisers pay for clicks, and a click is a click, however it's obtained.
2025 October 15, 'Mystery Shopper', “About Anglia... and high scores”, in RAIL, number 1046, page 54:
Once again, the WiFi isn't willing to work. When the guard comes to check tickets, I ask him if it ever works. He rolls his eyes and tells me it rarely does. He says I'll be lucky if I get it to connect. I give up trying.
And indeed I blamed myself and sore repented me of having taken compassion on him and continued in this condition, suffering fatigue not to be described, till I said to myself, “I wrought him a weal and he requited me with my ill; by Allah, never more will I do any man a service so long as I live!”
So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore; / And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore; / That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe; / Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."
2020 November 9, Shae Connor, Rough and Tumble, Entangled: Embrace, →ISBN:
Plus, all that gym work means you've got muscles for days. You gotta werk it, babe." She puts a swish and swing into her next few steps before she bursts out laughing, and I have to join in.
2022 February 1, Lindsay Bryde, Tommy Mayberry, RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul's Drag Race, McFarland, →ISBN, page 41:
Today, almost three decades later, the sentence, "You better work" from the song is used on a daily basis.
The mine was worked until the last scrap of ore had been extracted.
1774, Edward Long, chapter 11, in The History of Jamaica. Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of that Island, volume 2, page 240:
They were told of a ſilver mine, that had been worked by the Spaniards, ſomewhere in the Healthſhire Hills, in St. Catharine; but they were not able to diſcover it.
"Still, boozers can be worked sometimes. Most people can, if you encourage their kink. One old woman staked me for three months because she got such a kick out of scandalmongering the neighbours to me."
Failure to hold the annual meeting, or to otherwise conduct the business of the annual meeting, shall not work a forfeiture or dissolution of the Cooperative.
So the pure limpid Stream, when foul with Stains / Of ruſhing Torrents, and deſcending Rains, / Work’s it ſelf clear, and as it runs, refines; / ’Till by Degrees, the floating Mirrour ſhines, / […]
1705, J[oseph] Addison, “Brescia, Verona, Padua”, in Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: […]Jacob Tonson,[…], →OCLC, page 54:
Here vex’d with Winter Storms Benacus raves, / Confus’d with working Sands and rolling Waves; / Rough and tumultuous like a Sea it lyes, / So loud the Tempeſt roars, ſo high the Billows riſe.
1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “X. Century.”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries.[…], London: […]William Rawley[…]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee[…], →OCLC, paragraph 992, page 255:
For Inanimate Things, you may trie the Force of Imagination, vpon Staying the Working of Beere, when the Barme is put in; Or vpon the Comming of Butter, or Cheeſe, after the Cherming, or the Rennet bee put in.
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