Homework is the school work you have to do at home — the maths sheet, the twenty French words, the book you are meant to have finished by Thursday. It is what covers the kitchen table at seven in the evening while dinner cooks.
It is uncountable, without exception: you do homework, you have a lot of homework, you have three pieces of homework. Never a homework, never homeworks. The verb is do and not make — I did my homework, not I made my homework. Away from school it means preparation of any kind, and it lands as high praise or as sharp criticism: she had clearly done her homework before the meeting; he had not done his homework and everyone could tell. Keep it apart from housework, which is the cleaning and the washing; the two swap places by accident all the time.
1nounhomeworkSchool work that a pupil is given to do at home.~98%
“He finished his homework before dinner.”
2nounpreparationPreparation or research done before something important.~2%
“The lawyer had done her homework and knew every date by heart.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
homework is school work.
From home + work.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA