chare

Why this word is great

CHARE — [Noun] A narrow lane or passage between houses in a town, or the act of working by the day or doing small jobs. From Middle English chare, a variant of char, cher ("a turn"), from Old English ċierr, ċerr ("a turn, change, time, occasion, affair, business"), from Proto-Germanic *karzijaną ("to turn, sweep"), from Proto-Indo-European *gers- ("to turn, bend"). Unlike "alley" (which is broad and anonymous) or "freelancer" (which wears its independence like a badge), "chare" is the word of cobbles and soot, of hands that turn to tasks as the light turns to dusk. It is the shadowed cut between Yorkshire tenements, the scrubbed step of a washerwoman at dawn, the coin counted out at day’s end—a relic of work and passage, both humble and precise.