strike work

present singular third person strikes work · participle present striking work · past struck work · participle past struck work · archaic participle past rare stricken work

1. IndiadatedTo go on strike.

   […] whenever they’ve got a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they’ll strike work.

   1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 16, in Mary Barton, volume 1, London: Chapman and Hall, page 286

   3 more examples

   About nine hundred bakers, it is said, struck work on Saturday night, in consequence of their wages not being raised.

   1799, The Lady’s Magazine, volume 30, page 525

   1871, David Livingstone, journal entry dated 11 February, 1871, in Horace Waller (ed.), The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, London: John Murray, 1874, Volume 2, Chapter 4, p. 99, Men struck work for higher wages: I consented to give them six dollars a month if they behaved well; if ill I diminish it, so we hope to start to-morrow.

   The strike, which is into its third day, has raised serious ethical questions whether doctors should strike work at the cost of patients.

   2017 March 16, “Patients left in lurch as doctors continue strike”, in The New Indian Express

   Synonyms: strike

2. datedTo stop working (for a break, at the end of the work day, etc.).

   This very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, just before a snow-storm which covered the ground several inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in search of food.

   1871, James Russell Lowell, “My Garden Acquaintance”, in My Study Windows, Boston: James R. Osgood, page 6

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   1848, Charles Dickens, letter dated 28 November, 1848 in Georgina Hogarth and Mamie Dickens (eds.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 1, p. 203, Come down on Friday. There is a train leaves London Bridge at two—gets here at four. By that time I shall be ready to strike work.

   c. 1930s, Bert Higgins, interview transcribed in Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Arkansas, Slave Narratives, Volume 2, Part 3, Washington: Library of Congress, 1941, When we got free old master read it to us out of the paper. We was out in the field and I was totin’ water. Some of ’em struck work and went to the house and set around a while but they soon went back to the field. And a few days after that he hired ’em.

   Synonyms: quit, call it a quits, pack it in

3. datedfigurativelyTo stop functioning.

   […] when you come to the end of the beams and try to get up again, you find that your knees have temporarily struck work and refuse to lift you.

   1937, George Orwell, chapter 2, in The Road to Wigan Pier, New York: Harcourt, Brace, published 1958, page 27

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   1845, Robert Browning, letter dated 28 January, 1845 in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846, New York: Harper, 1899, p. 9, Your books lie on my table here, at arm’s length from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance for either green-covered volume,

   These auroras were accompanied with unusually great electro-magnetic disturbances in every part of the world. In many places the telegraph wires struck work.

   1877, Richard A. Proctor, chapter 6, in Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 182

   Many of the smaller brooks had struck work altogether, while the main river was reduced to a clear stream trickling lazily down between sloping banks of rounded white boulders […]

   1885, Clinton Dent, chapter 1, in Above the Snow Line, London: Longmans, Green, page 9