laborer
noun
Simple meaning
Someone who uses bodily strength rather than intellect to earn a wage, usually hourly.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
laybererSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈleɪbɚɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
One who uses bodily strength rather than intellect to earn a wage, usually hourly.
American spelling
One who labors.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One who uses bodily strength rather than intellect to earn a wage, usually hourly.
Used this way, laborer is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A person who tills the soil for a living.
A laborer who works by the day.
Someone who works with their hands.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: one who uses bodily strength rather than intellect to earn a wage
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.