sweatshop

[ swet-shop ]
See synonyms for sweatshop on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a shop, small factory, or other workplace employing workers at low wages, for long hours, and under poor conditions.

Origin of sweatshop

1
First recorded in 1865–70; sweat + shop

Words Nearby sweatshop

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use sweatshop in a sentence

  • The sweatshop, child-labor, excessive hours for women, were attacked with considerable effect.

  • After a disheartening period of working in the sweatshop he saw an opportunity to start in business for himself.

    The Book of Courage | John Thomson Faris
  • Says his father's dead and mother earns seventeen a week in a sweatshop and sends him to school.

    By Advice of Counsel | Arthur Train
  • As long as women buy the cheap kind made at the sacrifice of human life, this sweatshop system will continue.

    Clothing and Health | Helen Kinne

British Dictionary definitions for sweatshop

sweatshop

/ (ˈswɛtˌʃɒp) /


noun
  1. a workshop where employees work long hours under bad conditions for low wages

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for sweatshop

sweatshop

A small factory or shop in which employees are poorly paid and work under adverse conditions. Sweatshops were especially common in the garment industry during the early twentieth century.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.