Hardworking

How to spell hardworking

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce hardworking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hardworking mean?

1. adjectivePutting consistent effort and diligence into one's tasks or job.

Hardworking in a sentence

• The manager praised her hardworking team for meeting every deadline.

• A hardworking student tends to revise long before the exams begin.

Where does hardworking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, built entirely from native Old English roots. The first element, 'hard', descends from Old English 'heard', meaning 'firm, solid, severe', and by extension 'demanding effort'. The second part comes from 'work', from Old English 'weorc', meaning 'something done, a deed or labour', a word with cousins across the Germanic languages including German 'Werk'. The combining form '-working' simply turns the verb into an adjective describing how a person applies effort. The compound itself is relatively modern, appearing in English in the 1700s as a single descriptive label for someone who toils diligently, and its spelling is straightforward because each piece is a familiar everyday word.

How the word is built

• hard (adjective: showing great effort)
• work (root: labour, toil)
• -ing (adjectival suffix)