Word.ws English Dictionary

putting to work

putting to work is the present participle and gerund of put to work.

Meaning of put to work

Verb

put to work (third-person singular simple present puts to work, present participle putting to work, simple past and past participle put to work)

  1. (idiomatic) to put to use
    • Clearly, empathy is a Scriptural concept that Christians can put to work in becoming better leaders.2008, David L. Goetsch, Taking Your Faith to Work, →ISBN, page 26
  2. Give a job; Force to work (even if it is make-work)
    • Insistence that those who become dependent on the state be put to work seeks to impose the demands of the reality principle on them or to punish them by forcing them to do the unskilled work inconsistent with creative living.2007, David P. Levine, Welfare, Right and the State: A Framework for Thinking, →ISBN, page 28

Questions about putting to work

What is putting to work the present participle and gerund of?
Putting to work is the present participle and gerund of put to work.

Words near putting to work in the dictionary

  1. putting to the sword
  2. putting to the test
  3. putting to the torch
  4. putting to use
  5. putting to words
  6. putting to work
  7. putting together
  8. putting two and two together
  9. putting two and two together and coming up with five
  10. putting two and two together and making five
  11. putting under

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: putting to work (page history and authors); put to work (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: “putting to work.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/putting_to_work. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.