day laborer
11
3.5
- noun
- /deɪ ˈleɪbərər/
- US
:
jornalero
- Every morning, day laborers gather at the corner to find work for the day.
- day laborers and sharecroppers
- homeless day laborers
- landless day laborers
Examples
-
He's working as a day laborer.
-
Most black men worked in service jobs as waiters, day laborers, and porters.
Academic text (2005) -
Most of these refugees lived in camps and found what employment they could as day laborers.
Academic text (1995) -
"So institutions are saving money by hiring day laborers.
Academic text (2006) -
My father's grandfather was an ordinary day laborer.
-
There were a couple of day laborers who were in the recent immigrant sample.
-
Since the 1980s, hiring local construction workers and agricultural day laborers has become more widespread.
Academic text (1993) -
Flavio, a long-time Hometown resident who works as a day laborer doing construction, was fired by his boss after having a work accident.
Academic text (2016) -
Seven of those 21, or 33% (12% of all women interviewed), worked as day laborers (recall that another 7 were landowners).
Academic text (2002) -
Day laborers assemble daily on sidewalks, parking lots, and the gathering site at Las Vias.
Academic text (2010)
Synonyms
68
1.0
A person who does hard physical work without special skills, often on building sites
1
3.0
A person who does hard work using their hands
A person who does physical work with their hands
A person who does casual jobs to earn extra money and often does not declare them
How Skilled
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: combining 'day' (a daily period/each day) with 'laborer' (a manual worker) yields a worker hired/paid on a daily basis. This noun–noun compounding is a common, productive pattern across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Day laborer comes from the image of workers who gather each morning to find short jobs and are 'paid at the end of the day'. The words day and laborer show the work is done day-by-day and they often do physical work, so today it means 'a person employed and paid on a daily basis'.