drudge
/drʌdʒ
/- Put a few good men into corporations, and they become dull, soulless, humourless drudges given to tossing the word ‘defamatory’ around for no good reason.
- At no point in the story, therefore, is Pip set to be a drudge or a wage slave, though he has nothing of the gentleman about him.
- Anna is a drudge, helping out at a nursery and running around her lazy father and little brother.
Synonyms
- I am drudging at the writing table.
Origin
Middle English (as a noun): of unknown origin; perhaps related to drag.
drag from Middle English:
The word drag comes from the same Old Norse root as draw (Old English), draught (Middle English), the type of cart known as a dray (Late Middle English), and possibly drudge (Middle English). The sense ‘a boring or tiresome person or thing’ developed in the early 19th century from the idea of an attachment that drags and hinders progress. The cumbersomeness of contemporary women's dress may also be behind the use of drag for ‘women's clothing worn by a man’, which is recorded from the 1870s. A street has been a drag since the middle of the 19th century. A description of London life in 1851 records a woman ‘whose husband has got a month for “griddling in the main drag” (singing in the high street)’. The term later became better known in the USA, especially in the main drag.