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Glite Dictionary
📅 A weekday ⏰ A work shift
working day

working day

1 2.0
The hours an employee must work in one day for normal pay
  • noun
translation icon : jornada laboral
  • Visitors can now travel to big-ticket spots like Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan, and Irrawaddy regions with no restrictions, but must apply for a permit for some destinations, which typically takes around five to seven working days.

Examples

  • Our working day is 9:00 to 5:00.

    Sabrina (1954)

  • He averaged a sixteen-hour working day six days a week and was on call on Sundays.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The working day in the department starts at 0900 h, with the on-call doctor presenting new patients, and finishes after the following round at 1100 h.

    Academic text (1996)

  • A standard working day for most employees is eight hours long.

  • In our company, a typical working day starts at 9 AM and ends at 5 PM.

  • He prefers to finish all his tasks within the working day instead of taking work home.

Synonyms

workday
vsworking day
13 1.0

The number of hours a person is expected to work in a day

is the official count of hours required for one paid day
work day
vsworking day
6 1.0

A day when someone usually works at their job

refers specifically to the number of hours required within that calendar day
work time
vsworking day
4 2.4

The hours when a person must work for their job

focuses instead on a fixed hours count in a single paid day

Antonyms

holiday
458 1.0

A day when most people do not have to work because of a law or custom

leisure
100 1.3

Time not spent working when you can relax or do things you enjoy

How Long

overtime
20 2.7
working day
1 2.0
half-time
4 3.2

Surface Forms

working day singular
working days plural

Morphology

working + day

The meaning is directly compositional: 'working' (relating to work) modifies 'day' (a day), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a day on which work is done (vs. a weekend/holiday). This construction is common across languages and follows regular adjective+noun composition, making it readily understandable to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Working day comes from the simple idea of the words working and day together: a day with set hours of work. Imagine a factory or office bell that marks the start and end of your shift, and you can see why it now means the number of hours an employee is required to work in one day.