dogsbody means A person who does menial work, a servant. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why this word is great
DOGSBODY — [Noun] A person assigned to menial, tedious, and often thankless tasks, typically a junior employee or servant. From the English words 'dog' and 'body', originally early 19th-century British naval slang 'dog's body' for an unappetizing pease pudding, later transferred to low-ranking sailors and then to menial workers. Unlike "factotum" (which implies a versatile, trusted jack-of-all-trades) or "assistant" (which suggests defined duties and some responsibility), "dogsbody" connotes a low-status vessel for the accumulation of all drudgery. It is the scrape of cold, greasy lunch plates, the heft of archive boxes up three flights of stairs, and the tactile ache of a thousand envelopes licked and sealed—the silent, physical currency of paying one's dues in a system that mistakes initiation for indignity.
noun
- A person who does menial work, a servant.“Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin.”
verb
- To act as a dogsbody, to do menial work“Perhaps because, having been brought up in all those different countries and languages, and then studying economics of all things for just a year, followed by four years dogsbodying for a haulage company, he had never got any serious reading done.”