work camp
- noun
- /wɜrk kæmp/
- Thousands of Jews who had managed to leave Germany were arrested and sent to work camps.
- sent to a work camp
Examples
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This is a state-sponsored work camp for delinquents.
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Well, it's called a work camp.
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You all have to walk until you reach a work camp.
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At 14, he was in a Japanese work camp, and the stories he tells about that are horrific.
Blog text (6) -
Belzyce is now a work camp.
Fiction book (1997) -
A large proportion of these men were sent to work camps and juvenile detention centers at an early age.
Academic text (1991) -
The work camp was at Tel Yosef.
Fiction book (1993) -
Living and laboring in a work camp in Cambodia was typical during the Khmer Rouge regime: 62 percent of participants reported living in a work camp for at least six months.
Academic text (2000) -
Johnson ended up in what he calls the hardest work camp in the state of Georgia.
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This is a state-sponsored work camp for delinquents.
Synonyms
A camp where guards keep people against their will, often during war
A prison where people are forced to work, often for political reasons
A place where poor people and minor criminals lived and had to work in the past
A place in the countryside where people who broke the law live and work on farms
How Punitive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun is transparently compositional: it denotes a camp where people do work, which follows directly from combining 'work' and 'camp'. Although legal or punitive nuances (forced labour, rehabilitation) require extra world knowledge, a B1 learner who knows both constituents will grasp the basic meaning.
Etymology
The noun work camp comes from places where people lived in a simple camp and were made to do hard work. Because of that literal image, work camp now means a camp where people, often 'prisoners', are 'forced to work' as punishment or for public projects.