strike work

English

Verb

strike work (third-person singular simple present strikes work, present participle striking work, simple past struck work, past participle struck work or stricken work)

1. (dated, India) To go on strike.

   Synonym: strike

   • 1799, The Lady’s Magazine‎^[1], volume 30, page 525:

     About nine hundred bakers, it is said, struck work on Saturday night, in consequence of their wages not being raised.

   • 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 16, in Mary Barton‎^[2], volume 1, London: Chapman and Hall, page 286:

     […] whenever they’ve got a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they’ll strike work.

   • 1871, David Livingstone, journal entry dated 11 February, 1871, in Horace Waller (ed.), The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, London: John Murray, 1874, Volume 2, Chapter 4, p. 99,^[3]

     Men struck work for higher wages: I consented to give them six dollars a month if they behaved well; if ill I diminish it, so we hope to start to-morrow.

   • 2017 March 16, “Patients left in lurch as doctors continue strike”, in The New Indian Express:

     The strike, which is into its third day, has raised serious ethical questions whether doctors should strike work at the cost of patients.

2. (dated) To stop working (for a break, at the end of the work day, etc.).

   Synonyms: quit, call it a quits, pack it in

   • 1848, Charles Dickens, letter dated 28 November, 1848 in Georgina Hogarth and Mamie Dickens (eds.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 1, p. 203,^[4]

     Come down on Friday. There is a train leaves London Bridge at two—gets here at four. By that time I shall be ready to strike work.

   • 1871, James Russell Lowell, “My Garden Acquaintance”, in My Study Windows‎^[5], Boston: James R. Osgood, page 6:

     This very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, just before a snow-storm which covered the ground several inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in search of food.

   • c. 1930s, Bert Higgins, interview transcribed in Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Arkansas, Slave Narratives, Volume 2, Part 3, Washington: Library of Congress, 1941,^[6]

     When we got free old master read it to us out of the paper. We was out in the field and I was totin’ water. Some of ’em struck work and went to the house and set around a while but they soon went back to the field. And a few days after that he hired ’em.

3. (dated, figurative, of things) To stop functioning.
   • 1845, Robert Browning, letter dated 28 January, 1845 in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846, New York: Harper, 1899, p. 9,^[7]

     Your books lie on my table here, at arm’s length from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance for either green-covered volume,

   • 1877, Richard A. Proctor, chapter 6, in Myths and Marvels of Astronomy‎^[8], New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 182:

     These auroras were accompanied with unusually great electro-magnetic disturbances in every part of the world. In many places the telegraph wires struck work.

   • 1885, Clinton Dent, chapter 1, in Above the Snow Line‎^[9], London: Longmans, Green, page 9:

     Many of the smaller brooks had struck work altogether, while the main river was reduced to a clear stream trickling lazily down between sloping banks of rounded white boulders […]

   • 1937, George Orwell, chapter 2, in The Road to Wigan Pier‎^[10], New York: Harcourt, Brace, published 1958, page 27:

     […] when you come to the end of the beams and try to get up again, you find that your knees have temporarily struck work and refuse to lift you.