Works

How to spell works

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce works

What does works mean?

1. verbPerforms labour, operates, or functions, in the third person singular.
2. nounBooks, paintings, musical pieces, or other creative productions of an author or artist.
3. nounAn industrial plant or factory, or the moving internal parts of a machine.

Works in a sentence

• verb

  She works from home three days a week.

• noun

  The gallery displays the complete works of the painter.

• noun

  The old iron works closed down after fifty years of production.

• verb

  The heating only works when the thermostat is turned up.

• noun

  Her collected works fill several shelves in the library.

• noun

  Dust had clogged the delicate works inside the clock.

Where does works come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural and verb form of 'work', which descends from the Old English noun 'weorc' and verb 'wyrcan', both meaning labour, an action, or something made by effort. The root traces back to a shared Germanic source, and it is a close cousin of the Greek 'ergon', meaning a deed or task, which survives in modern words like 'energy' and 'erg'. Over the centuries the simple idea of 'a thing done' branched into several familiar senses: the verb form for operating or functioning, the plural for creative productions such as books or paintings, and 'the works' for an industrial plant or the inner mechanism of a machine. Because the word is entirely native English and phonetically regular, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable; the only mild trap is the 'or' spelling of the 'er' sound, inherited straight from 'weorc'.

How the word is built

• work (from Old English weorc: labour, deed)
• -s (plural/third-person verb ending)