outwork
To work more, faster, or harder than (someone else).
Noun
- A minor, subsidiary fortification built beyond the main limits of fortification.
- Beyond the castle, scattered outworks offered some protection for the farther-flung peasants.
Coordinate Terms: fieldwork
- Agricultural work done outdoors in the fields.
Synonyms: fieldwork
Origin
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úd Proto-Germanic *ūt Proto-Germanic *ūt- Old English ūt- Middle English ut- English out- Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom Proto-Germanic *werką Proto-West Germanic *werk Old English weorc Middle English werk English work English outwork From out- + work.
Forms
Verb
- To work more, faster, or harder than (someone else).
- A few may be able to outsmart him, but no one can outwork him.
- And I am one of those people who is indefatigable, in the true sense that I beg someone to find someone who can outwork me. - 2009, Bill Boggs, Got What It Takes?:
Hypernyms: outdo
- To work out to a finish; to complete.
- For now three dayes of men were full outwrought, / Since he this hardie enterprize began [...]. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie,...