hewers of wood and drawers of water
hewers of wood and drawers of water noun: those who drudge, or are made to work hard; those who do menial or servile work at the behest of others; physical labourers.
Noun
hewers of wood and drawers of water pl (plural only)
- Those who drudge, or are made to work hard; those who do menial or servile work at the behest of others; physical labourers.
- And the Princes ſaid vnto them, Let them liue, (but let them bee hewers of wood, and drawers of water, vnto all the Congregation,) as the Princes had promiſed them.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 9:21, column 1
- Now therefore ye are curſed, and there ſhall none of you bee freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood, and drawers of water, for the houſe of my God.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 9:23, column 1
Examples of hewers of wood and drawers of water in a sentence
- What of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and cobblers?1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 13:
- All these groups are among the hewers of wood and drawers of water whom Marx assured that they would have nothing but their chains to lose if they rose against their oppressors.1991, Martin Ohaeri Ijere, Women in Nigerian Economy, page 41:
Origin of hewers of wood and drawers of water
A biblical term, first mentioned in Joshua 9:21 (but compare Deuteronomy 29:10).
Questions about hewers of wood and drawers of water
- What does hewers of wood and drawers of water mean?
- Hewers of wood and drawers of water means those who drudge, or are made to work hard; those who do menial or servile work at the behest of others; physical labourers.
- How do you use hewers of wood and drawers of water in a sentence?
- What of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and cobblers?
- What part of speech is hewers of wood and drawers of water?
- Hewers of wood and drawers of water is a noun.
Words near hewers of wood and drawers of water in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hewers of wood and drawers of water (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hewers_of_wood_and_drawers_of_water. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.