worker
noun
Simple meaning
A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wurkerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwɝkɚ
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
A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
A person who works at a specific occupation
One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor.
computing
A thread performing one instance of a particular task within a program.
Sterile member of a colony of social insects that forages for food and cares for the larvae
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
Used this way, worker 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.
More ways to use worker
- “He is a good worker.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Exert oneself by doing mental or physical work for a purpose or out of necessity.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A workman in a mill or factory.
A hired hand on a farm.
An associate that one works with.
A person who makes garments.
An artisan who makes jewelry and other objects out of gold.
A person with temporary permission to work in another country.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The force of workers available.
The force of workers available.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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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.