drudgery
Usage
What are other ways to say drudgery?
Drudgery suggests continuous, dreary, and dispiriting work, especially of a menial or servile kind: the drudgery of household tasks. Labor particularly denotes hard manual work: backbreaking labor; arduous labor. Toil suggests wearying or exhausting labor: toil that breaks down the worker's health. Work is the general word and may apply to exertion that is either easy or hard: fun work; heavy work.
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:
People who ignore or undervalue prompting will remain trapped in the drudgery of manual operations, where data points must be located and assembled.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 25, 2026
It's a reminder of the human drudgery underpinning how AI systems operating in the physical world learn.
From BBC ● Jan. 11, 2026
They come for an escape from the drudgery of daily life, even planning vacations around his concerts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2025
You’ll root for the characters to vanquish him only because then the drudgery might finally end.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2025
The cyclotron’s celebrity as a technological phenomenon fed on itself, fueling its inventor’s preference for engineering and salesmanship over the tedious drudgery of hard science.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
But Roth is concerned that some patients may be so eager to escape the drudgeries of dialysis that they are willing to accept a sub-par kidney.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 17, 2020
I loved these tales of going up in these famous fighters and bombers on test runs, of the camaraderie on base, even the drudgeries of guard duty or rushing to breakfast in the mess.
From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2020
“Welfare” evokes poverty as a trial of rote drudgeries.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 2, 2019
Made me invincible to the drudgeries of working in advertising and the ever-present Void of living in general.”
From Slate ● Jul. 19, 2018
We tend to count the diseases conquered, the planets explored, the drudgeries banished, and to assert that the greater good is served by seeing things our way.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
Vocabulary lists containing drudgery
Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
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The Things They Carried
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
