working
Noun pluralworkings
Pluralworkings
- 1Present participle of work.
He is working late at the office again tonight.
The volunteers are working through a mountain of donations.
Note
Two Old English endings meet in this one spelling: the participle wyrċende and the verbal noun wyrċing both ended up as working. As a participle it builds the progressive with be (he's working). As a gerund it fills a noun's slot (working late wears you out). The verb's prepositions carry over: working in a trade, as a clerk, for an employer, with colleagues.
- 2In proper operating condition; able to function as intended.
Every working part of the engine was inspected before the trip.
The museum displays a working model of a steam locomotive.
Similarfunctional, functioning, operational, operative
Oppositebroken, inoperative, nonfunctional, defective
- 3Engaged in paid employment; holding a job.
Working families often struggle to afford child care.
The town's working population grew after the factory opened.
Similaremployed
Oppositeunemployed, jobless
- 4Relating to employment or the conditions under which a job is done.
Long working hours took a toll on the staff's health.
The contract spells out the working arrangements in detail.
- 5Sufficient to let one make practical use of something, though not complete or expert.
He brought a working knowledge of accounting to the new role.
You only need a working grasp of the software to get started.
Similarpractical, functional, basic, serviceable
- 6Put to use in real life; practical rather than purely theoretical.
The committee adopted a working approach grounded in everyday practice.
She prefers a working solution over an elegant theory.
Similarpractical, pragmatic, viable, functional
Oppositetheoretical, abstract
- 7Serving for the time being but still open to change; provisional.
The team adopted a working hypothesis to guide their early experiments.
The report's working draft still needs several rounds of edits.
Similarprovisional, tentative, preliminary, interim
Oppositefinal, definitive
- 8The intermediate calculations carried out and recorded while solving a larger problem.
Always include your working so the marker can follow your reasoning.
Her working filled three pages before she reached the answer.
Similarcalculations
Note
A schoolroom word from arithmetic: the working is everything written down between the question and the answer. It usually comes with a possessive, as in check your working or show your working. Teachers ask for it because it shows the route as well as the destination, and a slip in the working shows exactly where a wrong answer went astray.
- 9The operation or action of something; the fact of its being in motion.
The smooth working of the assembly line depends on careful timing.
The constant working of the tide slowly reshapes the shoreline.
Similaroperation, functioning, running, action, movement
Note
The oldest noun of the family: Old English wyrċing, the verbal noun of wyrċan "to work", with cousins in Dutch werking and German Wirkung. In this sense it usually goes plural, as in the workings of the mind or of a clock, naming the actions going on inside something. Keep it apart from the mine-and-quarry workings, which are places rather than processes.
- 10The manner or method by which something operates.
The book reveals the inner working of the stock market.
Engineers studied the working of the new turbine to improve efficiency.
Similaroperation, mechanism, functioning
- 11A site or location where work, especially digging or industry, is carried out.
Surveyors mapped each underground working in the coal mine.
The flooded working was sealed off for safety.
Similarexcavation, pit
Note
Mining gives this sense its familiar phrase, in the plural: the abandoned mine workings are the shafts and galleries left behind. The same plural spelling serves the inner-operation sense, so context has to decide. The workings of a mine may be its tunnels or the way it is run, and only the surrounding sentence tells you which.
- 12A scheduled movement or trip made by a train.
Each working on the branch line is logged by the signaler.
A late-night freight working passed through the empty station.
Note
Railway operators count trains in workings. Each scheduled run is one working, and a through working carries coaches onward beyond their own line. Cecil J. Allen, writing in 1960, has the Lötschberg Railway's coaches traveling far from Switzerland "on through workings such as these." Here the noun is strictly countable, and it belongs to timetables and rosters rather than everyday speech.
- 13The process of fermentation, as in brewing or wine-making.
The brewer watched the working of the must over several days.
Active working in the barrel produces carbon dioxide and alcohol.
Similarfermentation, ferment
- 14Of a lake, pond, or other body of water: the process of becoming full of vegetable matter.
Fishermen stay away from the mere during its working, when the water clouds with drifting plant matter.
A late-summer working left the reservoir choked with green scum for weeks.
- 15Producing the intended effect; effective or efficacious.
Note
The stage once used this sense, and the language has since dropped it. In Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587–1588), "woorking woordes" are words that take effect, words that do something rather than merely sound. Modern English says effective or efficacious instead. A working remedy today would be read through the "in working order" meaning, so the old sense now lives only in older texts.
Showing meanings only.
working is a form of work
work, verb: To have a job or do one's job, in a particular place, for an employer, in a particular role, or with particular people or things (with in, at, for, as or with). Full entry
- Spelling
- work → working: add -ing
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English werking, from Old English wyrcing, a verbal noun of wyrcan ("to work"), essentially work plus the suffix -ing. It is related to Dutch werking and German Wirkung.
From Middle English workyng, from Old English wyrcende, from Proto-Germanic *wurkijandz, the present participle of *wurkijaną ("to work"), effectively work plus -ing. Compare Dutch werkend and German wirkend ("working, acting").