dirty work
65
4.6
- noun
- /ˈdɜrti wɜrk/
- Informal
:
trabajo sucio
- Why do I always have to do all the dirty work?
The Supreme Court is still doing Trump's dirty work.
- The Supreme Court is still doing Trump's dirty work.
- So let's stop doing the enablers dirty work for them.
- They don't have the gradient, but that DMT will get in there and do that dirty work.
- And because of that, we, we have to cheat, we have to do some dirty work, which I don't want you to know about.
- This martyr thing also pushes you into doing their dirty work.
- You just have these poor, deprived people who are going to do all that dirty work for them.
- And these guys, they, they were kind of like, kind of like a militia that was ethnic and ethnic militia that could do The Dirty work of the president in Sudan.
- They are so in the pocket of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden that, you know, they just do his dirty work for him.
- We'll get the Palestinians to do The Dirty work, and that way we won't any longer be ostracized for the occupation.
- But being honest about and they're doing, they're doing the terrible dirty work themselves, not expecting someone else to do it.
- And therefore you need somebody in the entire caste structure who is actually can do the dirtiest work.
- I make I make Toby E and mall do all The Dirty work.
- Yep, it was it more of an expectation and I don't have to do The Dirty work.
Examples
-
So you were just using me to do your dirty work.
-
The trick was to get someone else to do his dirty work.
Fiction book (2002) -
Probably got him to do the dirty work.
-
Effectively, the British Empire got a portion of our people to do their dirty work for them.
Academic text (2000) -
Basically, we did God's dirty work around the globe.
-
All his flunkies do his dirty work.
-
And then there were those who did the tough and dirty work, the peasants.
Academic text (1996) -
Angela looked at him angrily; she was the one who had to do the dirty work.
Fiction book (1995) -
To work, the new system needs regional powers and organizations to do the dirty work of peacekeeping and peacemaking.
Academic text (2000) -
I don't mind handling the dirty work if it means the team can succeed.
Synonyms
10
5.3
Boring, simple jobs that are necessary and take a lot of time
3
8.1
Simple unpleasant tasks that no one wants to do
1
9.9
Unpleasant small jobs that no one wants to do
A lot of hard, boring work that others avoid but must be done
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'unpleasant or morally distasteful tasks' is directly derived from combining 'dirty' (morally/physically unclean or dishonest) with 'work' (tasks), where the adjective straightforwardly qualifies the type of work. This adjective+noun compositional pattern is common and has close parallels in other languages (e.g., Spanish 'trabajo sucio'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the meaning.
Etymology
Dirty work may come from the image of jobs that make your hands literally dirty, like cleaning, digging, or slaughtering animals. So it came to mean 'unpleasant, difficult, or morally bad' tasks that others do not want to do.