workless

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English

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Etymology

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From work +‎ -less.

Adjective

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workless (not comparable)

  1. Devoid of work.
    In the future, will machines end the need for employment and lead to a workless society?
    • 1935, Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains (U.S. title: The Last of Mr Norris), Chapter Eight, in The Berlin Stories, New York: New Directions, 1963, p. 87,[1]
      And morning after morning, all over the immense, damp, dreary town and the packing-case colonies of huts in the suburb allotments, young men were waking up to another workless empty day to be spent as they could best contrive []
  2. Having no work to do; unemployed.
    • 1516, Sir Thomas More, Utopia:
      The number of workless swelled to terrible dimensions
    • 2007, Helping people from workless households into work (published by the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom)
      A workless household is defined as a household that includes at least one person of working-age (men aged 16-64 years and women aged 16-59 years) where no one in the household aged 16 or over is in employment.
  3. (obsolete) Not carried out in practice; not exemplified in fact.

Quotations

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  • 2002, Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, Kinetics of human motion, page 462:
    Hence, workless forces are also powerless forces.

Translations

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