Other forms: jobs
Your job is the work you are paid to do: where you go in the morning, the answer when a stranger asks what you do. A part-time job in a cafe, a new job in Berlin, the awful week you lose your job.
It is countable, and that is the trap, because you find a job and you have two jobs, while work stays uncountable and never takes an a. Job also means a single piece of work rather than a whole career, as in a paint job, a few jobs around the house, "this'll be a two-hour job". To do a good job is to do something well, paid or not, so you can do a good job of parking. British English says "it's a good job you called" where American English says lucky. And in films a job is a robbery, which is why the plot always turns on one last job.
1nounjobThe paid work someone does regularly.~49%
“She got a job at the hospital straight after training.”
2nounsingleA single piece of work to be done.~44%
“Clearing the gutters is a two-person job.”
3noundutyA duty or responsibility.~5%
“It is not my job to lock up at the end of the night.”
4nouncrime(informal) a crime, especially a robbery.~2%
“They pulled off the job without waking anyone in the building.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
job is a form of work.
The word began in the phrase a jobbe of work, meaning a piece of work, and where jobbe itself came from nobody is sure. One guess links it to Middle English gobbe, a mass or a lump, the same idea as a gob of something, so a job may have started as a lump of work handed to you. Another points to jobben, to jab or peck at something.
Middle English
gobbe — mass, lump
English, today
job
From the phrase jobbe of work (“piece of work”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from a variant of Middle English gobbe (“mass, lump”); or perhaps related to Middle English jobben (“to jab, thrust, peck”), or Middle English choppe (“piece, bargain”). More at gob, jab, chop.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA