Hackwork

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Work that is usually of a professional nature, either repetitive or following a certain formula. countable, informal, uncountable

    "During those fifteen months, he cannot have earned more than $10 a month from writing, mostly from the worst sort of hackwork"

  2. 2
    professional work done according to formula wordnet
  3. 3
    Any type of work that is dull or unoriginal. countable, derogatory, informal, uncountable
  4. 4
    (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) undistinguished literary work produced to order. wordnet

Example

More examples

"During those fifteen months, he cannot have earned more than $10 a month from writing, mostly from the worst sort of hackwork"

Etymology

From hack + work.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.