Drudgery is boring, repetitive work that feels tiresome and unrewarding. When you have to rake leaves for hours in the hot sun, or copy the same math problems over and over as punishment, or spend an entire afternoon scrubbing dishes, that's drudgery. The work might be necessary, but it's monotonous and draining.

The word captures that feeling of being stuck doing something mind-numbing, with no creativity or variety involved. Factory workers in the 1800s often faced pure drudgery, performing the same simple task thousands of times each day. Today, we use machines and computers to handle much of this repetitive work, though some drudgery still exists: stuffing envelopes, entering data into spreadsheets, or pulling weeds from a garden for hours.

Drudgery is different from hard work that challenges you. Building a treehouse is hard work, but it's engaging and creative. Carrying the same stack of bricks back and forth for no clear reason would be drudgery. When someone complains about the drudgery of their chores, they're saying it's tedious and exhausting, the kind of work that makes time crawl by and leaves you feeling worn out without any sense of accomplishment.