Word.ws English Dictionary

work-to-rule

work-to-rule noun: a labor protest in which employees do only the minimum work required by the rules of a workplace, following safety or other regulations to the letter in order to cause a slowdown.

Noun

work-to-rule (plural work-to-rules)

  1. A labor protest in which employees do only the minimum work required by the rules of a workplace, following safety or other regulations to the letter in order to cause a slowdown.

Adjective

work-to-rule (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to such a protest.
    • Disgruntled by chronic staff shortages, doctors threatened a “work-to-rule” action at the East London Hospital Complex by the end of this week.2008 June 11, “EL doctors threaten ‘work to rule’ action”, in Dispatch Online, South Africa, retrieved 26 Jun 2008

Forms of work-to-rule

pluralwork-to-rules
alternative nounwork to rule

Origin of work-to-rule

Deverbal from work to rule.

Questions about work-to-rule

What does work-to-rule mean?
Work-to-rule means a labor protest in which employees do only the minimum work required by the rules of a workplace, following safety or other regulations to the letter in order to cause a slowdown.
What part of speech is work-to-rule?
Work-to-rule can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of work-to-rule?
The plural of work-to-rule is work-to-rules.

Words near work-to-rule in the dictionary

  1. work-study
  2. work-study program
  3. work-study programs
  4. work-table
  5. work-tables
  6. work-to-rule
  7. work-to-rules
  8. work-tool
  9. work-tools
  10. work-up
  11. work-ups

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: work-to-rule (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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