Job

Etymology: Unknown origin → English job (a piece of work, 1550s) → job (regular employment, 19th century)

The origin of the English word job is unknown. It appeared in the 1550s meaning a piece of work, a task, a specific thing to be done, without a clear etymological ancestor in French, Latin, or any other source language.¹ Some scholars have suggested a connection to the Middle English gobbe, meaning a lump or mouthful, but the link is speculative.

For its first three centuries, job meant a specific task, not a permanent position. A person did jobs. A person did not have a job. The phrase "a steady job" would have been puzzling to an English speaker in 1600, because the word implied precisely the opposite: something temporary, discrete, and bounded.²

The modern meaning, a regular position of employment, solidified during the nineteenth century as the industrial economy created permanent wage positions that needed a name. The word that had described a lump of work, something you picked up and put down, became the word for the central organizing fact of adult life.³

English now uses the same word for a task, a role, an identity, and a moral obligation. Four meanings in a single syllable, all descended from a word whose origins no one can trace. The most important word in the vocabulary of modern work arrived from nowhere.⁴

Timeline

• 1550s, The word job appeared in English meaning a piece of work, with no clear etymological ancestor.
• 19th century, Job acquired its modern meaning of regular employment during industrialization.

Endnotes

1. Douglas Harper, "job," Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1976), s.v. "work."
3. Harper, "job," Online Etymology Dictionary.
4. Harper, "job," Online Etymology Dictionary.