workfuladj.

OE tr. Defensor Liber Scintillarum (1969) liii. 325 Sapiens uir mulierem respuit gestuosam : wis wer wif onscunað weorcfull.

1340 Ayenbite (1866) 199 Þe uirtues huerof we habbeþ y-speke aboue be-longeþ to þe uerste liue þet is ycleped workuol.

1565 T. Harding Confut. Apol. Church of Eng. ii. xiii. f. 97 Seest thou then how workefull is the word of Christ?

1587 Sir P. Sidney & A. Golding tr. P. de Mornay Trewnesse Christian Relig. v. 60 In the most single essence of God, there is a workfull power.

1610 H. Broughton Reuelation Holy Apocalyps (new ed.) xv. 237 God..because men did not receiue the loue of the trueth, to be saued, sendeth workfull error.

1674 N. Fairfax Treat. Bulk & Selvedge To Rdr. sig. b7^v The Philosophy of our day and Land being so much workful as the world knows it to be.

1862 H. R. F. Bourne Mem. Sir Philip Sidney xiii. 408 First of all, there is a workful Power, Ability, the basis of all action.

2010 A. Benjamin Writing Art & Archit. 98 The substantive centrality is given to what can be described as the object's workful nature and thus to its active or dynamic quality. As a consequence what insists is the question of the way the work works.

OE Glosses to Enchiridion of St. Augustine (Trin. Cambr. O.1.18) in A. S. Napier Old Eng. Glosses (1900) 196 Operosioris [uberiorisque doctrinae est]: weorcfulran.

1731 Misc. Poems Several Hands 127 Lash'd unwilling to the hated Wheel, Some lab'ring Turnspit sweats with workful Toil Ceaseless.

1854 C. Dickens Hard Times i. v. 27 You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful.

1875 G. J. Holyoake Hist. Co-operation in Eng. I. xii. 353 Being very watchful and workful as a secretary.

1891 Rev. of Reviews 15 Oct. 352/2 Seven happy workful months spent in Paris.

1910 Continent 29 Dec. 1876/1 Two sabbaths and a workful year between.

1996 Relig. & Lit. 28 130 The busy, workful and rather austerely Protestant history of an industrial and scientifically minded city from Roman times.

2010 D. Rhoten & W. Lutters in W. S. Bainbridge Online Worlds xxi. 274 Will the act of collaborative work turn more playful, or will collective play turn more workful in virtual worlds of the future?

1570 A. Golding tr. D. Chytræus Postil 234 Of the workfulnesse of the woorde: of Apostles: of the vniuersall calling of all nacions.

1854 Tait's Edinb. Mag. 21 459/1 He might have seen, in any Coketown of the manufacturing districts, an allowance of what is playful, to compensate for its workfulness.

1903 J. C. Smith R. Wallace vi. 174 He resigned..a position of usefulness and workfulness.

2006 C. Gallagher Body Econ. iii. 63 The novel is both product and producer of the severe workfulness it seems to criticize.