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Glite Dictionary
fatigue duty

fatigue duty

8.0
Work that soldiers do, such as cleaning, often as routine or punishment
  • noun
  • /fəˈtiɡ ˈdjuːti/
  • Jargon
translation icon : trabajo de fatiga
  • During the training exercise, every soldier had to complete at least one session of fatigue duty to build teamwork.

Examples

  • After being reprimanded, he was assigned to fatigue duty for the rest of the week, which involved cleaning the barracks.

  • Two extra days fatigue duty.

    The Young Lions (1958)

  • I know, but if you were, you wouldn't have to pull K.P., or any other fatigue duty, for that matter.

    From Here to Eternity (1953)

  • It was like the old days of fatigue duty with the SAS.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • The soldiers spent their afternoons on fatigue duty, digging trenches and performing other menial tasks.

Synonyms

fatigue
vsfatigue duty
  • Jargon
12 7.2

Manual work given to soldiers as a routine duty or punishment

is the two-word phrase used to refer to those duties
grunt work
vsfatigue duty
  • Informal
10 5.3

Boring, simple jobs that are necessary and take a lot of time

refers specifically to soldier assigned noncombat duties rather than general tasks

How Hard

manual labor
  • US
18 3.3
fatigue duty
  • Jargon
8.0
duty
∞ 1.0
task
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

fatigue duty singular
fatigue duties plural

Morphology

fatigue + duty

The meaning 'duties consisting of routine or punitive manual chores' is directly derivable from combining 'fatigue' (military manual chores) with 'duty' (a responsibility). This is a regular noun+noun compositional pattern and, despite being a specialized military term, a B1 learner who knows both constituent senses would be able to infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Fatigue duty comes from an old use of fatigue meaning 'tiring work'. Soldiers were often given hard jobs like cleaning, digging or carrying heavy loads as a duty, so fatigue duty now means those manual jobs given to soldiers, sometimes as a punishment.