Word.ws English Dictionary

on the job

on the job prepositional phrase: working; busy; at work.

Prepositional phrase

  1. working; busy; at work.
    • Near-synonyms: on the clock; on the case, on it
    • Unlike your typical office drama, wherein characters’ lives intersect entertainingly both inside and outside work, the premise of Severance rests in the twisted implications of total compartmentalization: What if you could separate out your work memories (and thereby your work self), thereby...April 14 2022, Delia Cai, “Severance, the New York Times’s Twitter Guidelines, and the Forever Illusion of Work-Life Balance”, in Vanity Fair
  2. (slang) Having sex.
  3. (jargon) Being a police officer, as contrasted with a civilian.

Synonyms of on the job

Questions about on the job

What does on the job mean?
On the job means working; busy; at work.
What part of speech is on the job?
On the job is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the job in the dictionary

  1. on the instant
  2. on the internet
  3. on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog
  4. on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
  5. on the jar
  6. on the job
  7. on the jump
  8. on the knocker
  9. on the ladder
  10. on the lam
  11. on the lamb

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the job (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-on the job.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the job.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_job. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.