noun ·Common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor.

   "Near-synonym: employee"

2. 2
   sterile member of a colony of social insects that forages for food and cares for the larvae wordnet
3. 3
   A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
4. 4
   a person who works at a specific occupation wordnet
5. 5
   A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.; A female ant, bee, termite or wasp. rare

Show 3 more definitions

6. 6
   a person who acts and gets things done wordnet
7. 7
   A thread performing one instance of a particular task within a program.

   "This FTP client spawns a separate worker for each file to be uploaded."

8. 8
   a member of the working class (not necessarily employed) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

actorlaborerproletarianproletarianactoragent

Antonyms

All antonyms

bosschiefdirectoremployer

Example

More examples

"Wages vary in relation to the age of the worker."

Etymology

From Middle English werkere, worcher, wercher, equivalent to work + -er. Displaced the older term wright, from Old English wyrhta.

Related phrases

aid workeranti-workerbrain workerbuilding workercamera workercamera-workerco-workerconstruction workerday workerday-workerdecoration workerdock worker

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