Etimology
From Middle English werkere, worcher, wercher, equivalent to work + -er. Displaced the older term wright, from Old English wyrhta.
noun
worker (plural workers)
A person who performs labor for a living, especially manual labor.
A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
(computing) A thread performing one instance of a particular task within a program.
Examples
Fret not thy ſelfe becauſe of euill doers, neither bee thou enuious againſt the workers of iniquitie.
Writer Ta Chen, in a statistical study of industrial labor in China in 1933, recorded that 66.6 percent of the total number of workers in the four main industrial regions of Kwangtung were women. In Shun-te, 81.2 percent of the labor force were women.
Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese […] began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. The poisoning was irreversible, and soon ended in psychosis and death. Nowadays workers are exposed to far lower doses and manganism is rare.
Although the radiation levels identified are high, a threat to human health is very unlikely because apart from workers at the site, no-one goes there.
This FTP client spawns a separate worker for each file to be uploaded.
Related words
synonyms
(person who performs labor): laborer, labourer
hyponyms
(person who performs labor): employee