chore

Etymology

Like chare and char, an odd job, of which it is a variant,^[2][3][4][5] it is inherited from Middle English cherre (“a turn, an odd job”),^[4][6] inherited from Old English cierr, also cerr (“a turn, change; a time, occasion; business”).^[4][7][8] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford call it an unexplained variant.^[9][10] The Old English noun belongs to the verb cierran (“to turn, change”),^[7][11] from Proto-Germanic *karzijaną;^[1] Holthausen compares Welsh gyrru (“to drive, send”).^[7] The first element of charwoman is the same word.^[11][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A job or small task, especially one done routinely in a house or on a farm: 1626, in R. Bernard's Isle of Man, at first in regional English.^[2] The verb, to do a piece of work, appears before 1640 in Love's Cure, by Beaumont and others.^[2] Other dictionaries date the word later: Barnhart and Etymonline to 1751 for the noun, with the verb in 1746,^[3][4] and Merriam-Webster the noun to 1746.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The Old English word meant a turn or a change, and then a time, an occasion or an affair;^[4][7] Ayto explains the sense of work as "doing one's turn", one's turn at a task.^[11] The form chore was at first regional and American:^[10][5] in 1789 Noah Webster wrote that chore, which he took for a corruption of char, was still used in many parts of England, but in America perhaps only in New England, for small household jobs.^[4] The Dictionary of American Regional English has chores as "trifling employments at or near home" in New England in 1815, and the verb chore, also chore around, to do the regular daily work, from 1788, chiefly in the North.^[13] From 1839 the noun is also used of any tedious or unwelcome task that still has to be done.^[2] In the plural it often means the daily round of work on a farm, especially the morning and evening care of the livestock.^[12]

Timeline

• 1626 – a small routine task in a house or on a farm, at first in regional English.^[2]
• before 1640 – verb, to do a piece of work (rare before the early 20th century).^[2]
• 1746 – verb, to do chores.^[2][3] Merriam-Webster dates the noun to the same year.^[12]
• 1789 – Noah Webster notes chore as a New England word for small household jobs.^[4]
• 1839 – a tedious or unpleasant task that must nevertheless be done.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small routine task, especially in the household or on a farm: Washing the dishes was his chore on weekdays.^{[14][12][2][15]}
2. chores: the regular work of a farm, home or business, especially the morning and evening care of livestock.^[12]
3. An unpleasant, dull or burdensome task: Filling in the tax forms is always a chore.^[14][15][2]

Verb

1. To do chores or odd jobs.^[12][2][13]

Word family

• choreman

Related words

• char
• ajar
• chare
• charwoman

Usage notes

In 1867 James Russell Lowell preferred to derive chore from French jour, a day, as if it first meant a day's work, rather than from chare and char;^[13] the dictionaries take it as a variant of chare.^[2][9] Green's Dictionary of Slang records a Scottish slang verb chore, to steal, which has a separate source in Romani,^[16] and the Shorter Oxford an obsolete chore, a choir or a company, from Latin chorus.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b c Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com