Word.ws English Dictionary

made short work of

made short work of is the simple past and past participle of make short work of.

Meaning of make short work of

Verb

make short work of (third-person singular simple present makes short work of, present participle making short work of, simple past and past participle made short work of)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To do (a task) relatively quickly or easily.
    • A good electric screwdriver will make short work of the disassembly process.
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To deal with or overcome (someone or something) quickly and without difficulty.
    • "There was desperate characters here, but the vigilantes made short work of 'em."1897, Maynard Barbour, chapter 26, in The Award of Justice

Questions about made short work of

What is made short work of the simple past and past participle of?
Made short work of is the simple past and past participle of make short work of.

Words near made short work of in the dictionary

  1. made room
  2. made sense
  3. made shift
  4. made shit of
  5. made shit shake
  6. made short work of
  7. made some noise
  8. made someone hard to catch
  9. made someone's acquaintance
  10. made someone's blood boil
  11. made someone's blood run cold

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made short work of (page history and authors); make short work of (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.

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Cite this entry: “made short work of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/made_short_work_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.