strike work

Verb

strike work (third-person singular simple present strikes work, present participle striking work, simple past struck work, past participle struck work or (rare or archaic) stricken work)

1. (India, dated) To go on strike.
   • About nine hundred bakers, it is said, struck work on Saturday night, in consequence of their wages not being raised.1799, The Lady’s Magazine, volume 30, page 525
   • […] whenever they’ve got a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they’ll strike work.1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 16, in Mary Barton, volume 1, London: Chapman and Hall, page 286

   Synonyms:

   strike

2. (dated) To stop working (for a break, at the end of the work day, etc.).
   • Come down on Friday. There is a train leaves London Bridge at two—gets here at four. By that time I shall be ready to strike work.1848, Charles Dickens, letter dated 28 November, 1848 in Georgina Hogarth and Mamie Dickens (eds.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 1, p. 203
   • This very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, just before a snow-storm which covered the ground several inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in search of food.1871, James Russell Lowell, “My Garden Acquaintance”, in My Study Windows, Boston: James R. Osgood, page 6

   Synonyms:

   quit, call it a quits, pack it in

3. (dated, figuratively) To stop functioning.
   • Your books lie on my table here, at arm’s length from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance for either green-covered volume,1845, Robert Browning, letter dated 28 January, 1845 in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846, New York: Harper, 1899, p. 9
   • These auroras were accompanied with unusually great electro-magnetic disturbances in every part of the world. In many places the telegraph wires struck work.1877, Richard A. Proctor, chapter 6, in Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 182