scut work
3
8.1
- noun
- /skʌt wɜrk/
- Informal
:
trabajo insignificante
- I had to spend the whole day doing scut work, like filing paperwork and cleaning the office.
Examples
-
You know, lots and lots of rank-and-file members who travel to conventions at their own expense and do a lot of scut work.
Blog text (5) -
She could grab a snack before she began her four hours of scut work for Professor Adam, then after six hours of classes and practical on the use of polymerase III, she'd be able to scarf down dinner.
Fiction book (1992) -
But no one is too good to do scut work.
Blog text (6) -
The Muslims are in Europe because the Europeans believe that they are too good to do scut work.
Blog text (6) -
I hung around the theater door afterward and hit it lucky; they needed a hired boy for scut work.
Fiction book (1993) -
Then when I found a full-time entry-level research assistant job that paid $11 an hour (in 2005), they told me I was doing "scut work" for someone with a college degree and that it was a dead-end job.
Blog text (31) -
Traditional publishing has its pluses when it comes to promotion, but the author will still be out there busting their hump doing the scut work for their book/series.
Blog text (2) -
Though she had already thrown herself into charity work to try and keep herself afloat in the circles to which she aspired to belong, her inability to either donate largely or bring in big donors had relegated her to the scut work.
Fiction book (1994) -
Many interns are often assigned scut work, such as making coffee and running errands.
-
Despite his skills, he feels stuck in a position that involves mostly scut work with no opportunities for advancement.
Synonyms
195
1.0
A small, boring job you must do at home, like washing dishes
65
4.6
Unpleasant or shameful tasks that other people avoid
13
7.0
Boring, hard work that you do again and again
10
5.3
Boring, simple jobs that are necessary and take a lot of time
3
6.3
Tasks that keep you busy but have little real value
1
8.4
Tasks given mainly to keep someone busy instead of producing useful results
1
9.9
Unpleasant small jobs that no one wants to do
1
7.8
Repeated, boring manual work needed to keep computer systems running
A lot of hard, boring work that others avoid but must be done
A small unimportant task done badly, like filing papers
How Menial
Surface Forms
Morphology
scut + work
The key meaning 'menial, tedious tasks' depends on the element 'scut', which is an obscure/slang item with no clear literal meaning given here; knowing 'work' alone does not let a learner infer this specialized sense. Since the informative constituent is non-transparent and not compositionally predictable from 'work', a B1 learner who only knows the parts would not reliably derive the idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
Scut work may come from scut, an old word for a rabbit's short tail, which is small and unimportant so the word began to mean low-value things. Because new staff and young doctors often did those small, dirty jobs, scut work came to mean 'menial, boring tasks'.