Word.ws English Dictionary

zero-hours

zero-hours adjective: relating to a zero-hour contract or employment.

Adjective

zero-hours (not comparable)

  1. (UK) Relating to a zero-hour contract or employment.
    • The pay penalty directly associated with zero-hours work amounted to 6.6% or 93p an hour. For a typical zero-hours worker doing 21 hours a week, it amounts to £1,000 a year.2016 December 30, Phillip Inman, “Zero-hours workers '£1,000 worse off a year' than employees”, in The Guardian
    • I’d always heard about other people getting bullied in zero-hours jobs. But I didn’t take it seriously until it happened to me.2017 March 27, Martin Williams, quoting Josh, “The bullying and fear at the heart of zero-hour contracts”, in The Guardian

Examples of zero-hours in a sentence

  • Journalist James Bloodworth’s story of being ‘embedded’ for six months as a zero-hours worker is vital reading for all[.]2018 March 11, Nick Cohen, quoting James Bloodworth, “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain – review”, in The Guardian:
  • “Open their eyes to uni or a job.” But she can’t save any money on two contracts, one of which is zero-hours and the other guaranteeing only nine hours’ pay a week.2023 August 17, Aditya Chakrabortty, “Can’t pay and they really do take it away: what happens when the bailiffs come knocking”, in The...

Forms of zero-hours

alternative formzero-hour

Phrases with zero-hours

Questions about zero-hours

What does zero-hours mean?
Zero-hours means relating to a zero-hour contract or employment.
How do you use zero-hours in a sentence?
Journalist James Bloodworth’s story of being ‘embedded’ for six months as a zero-hours worker is vital reading for all[.]
What part of speech is zero-hours?
Zero-hours is an adjective.

Words near zero-hours in the dictionary

  1. zero-grades
  2. zero-gravity
  3. zero-grazed
  4. zero-hour contract
  5. zero-hour contracts
  6. zero-hours
  7. zero-hours contract
  8. zero-hours contracts
  9. zero-knowledge
  10. zero-knowledge proof
  11. zero-knowledge proofs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: zero-hours (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: “zero-hours.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zero-hours. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.