spadeworker

English

Etymology

spadework +‎ -er or spade +‎ worker

Noun

spadeworker (plural spadeworkers)

1. One who does spadework, now especially in the figurative sense of preparatory work.
   • 1868, William Hepworth Dixon, chapter 4, in Spiritual Wives‎^[1], London: Hurst & Blackett, page 37:

     Like master like man. The peasants and artisans follow their neighbors; the spade-workers voting with Bismarck and Falkenstein, the hand-workers with Jacoby and Rosenkranz.

   • 1906, Edwin A. Pratt, chapter 10, in The Transition in Agriculture‎^[2], London: John Murray, page 116:

     […] potato-growing can evidently be more profitably followed by producers on a large scale, having all the advantages of labour-saving appliances, than by market-gardeners, allotment-holders, and other spade-workers on comparatively small line.

   • 1911, Saki, “Ministers of Grace”, in The Chronicles of Clovis‎^[3], London: John Lane, published 1912, page 267:

     “Where I think you political spade-workers are so silly,” said the Duke, “is in the misdirection of your efforts. You spend thousands of pounds of money, and Heaven knows how much dynamic force of brain power and personal energy, in trying to elect or displace this or that man, whereas you could gain your ends so much more simply by making use of the men as you find them. […] ”

   • 1942, Lewis Mumford, article on Constance Rourke first published in Saturday Review, Volume 25, 15 August, 1942, cited in Dorothy Nyren Curley et al. (editors), Modern American Literature, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960, p. 109,^[4]

     She was equally at home in music, literature, painting, drama, and the crafts; and she would run down an obscure picture, ferret out a local tale, or rummage through heaps of faded letters with the relentless patience that marks the useful spadeworker.

   • 1950, William Carlos Williams, “The Visit”, in The Collected Later Poems‎^[5], revised edition, New York: New Directions, published 1963, page 235:

     Say I am less an artist
     than a spadeworker but one
     who has no aversion to taking
     his spade to the head
     of any who would derrogate
     his performance in the craft.

Alternative forms

• spade-worker