odd-job

English

Noun

odd-job (plural odd-jobs)

1. Alternative form of odd job
   • 2006, Mark Robson, Access to History: Italy: The Rise of Fascism 1915-1945, →ISBN:

     1902 – Left for Switzerland where he lived in poverty, doing only odd-jobs

   • 2011, Jenny Oldfield, Horses of Half Moon Ranch: Silver Spur, →ISBN:

     After a couple of years he'd come back to Colorado and chilled out at the Scotts' place. He'd planned to stay a few weeks, maybe doing odd-jobs to earn his keep.

   • 2013, Jack Goldstein, Jimmy Russell, 10 Amazing Slenderman Stories, →ISBN:

     Rosenblatt had spent eighteen months infiltrating the gang's infrastructure; starting at the lowest level, working odd-jobs for the street pushers Sol had worked his way up the organisation and had now secured a job working in the main drug factory on the south end of Hester Street, a building known as The Ballroom.

2. Attributive form of odd job.
   • 2012, Tom Quinn, They Also Serve: The real life story of my time in service as a butler, →ISBN:

     We had the logs delivered and an odd-job man carted them upstairs, but in the absence of a footman I had to make sure all the fires were lit and kept going in winter.

   • 2014, Javaid Syed, Those Houses on the Ridge: Lone Suicide, →ISBN:

     On Jaffer's second day of joining this group of odd-job seekers, a man who came in his car and hired a fat man from the queue with a ladder and a bucket in his hand, to whitewash his house, also took Jaffer as an extra hand, at almost half the rate which the man was to be paid.

   • 2016, Gregory Eliyu Guldin, Farewell to Peasant China, →ISBN:

     This makes it easier to understand why odd-job workers become the target every time the government “cleans up the city,” although they toil for the least pay and are subject to all kinds of injustices.

Verb

odd-job (third-person singular simple present odd-jobs, present participle odd-jobbing, simple past and past participle odd-jobbed)

1. To work by taking a variety of temporary jobs.
   • 2002, Lionel Rose, The Erosion of Childhood: Childhood in Britain 1860-1918, →ISBN:

     Both boys and girls were expected to 'odd-job' to bring in extra funds.

   • 2016, Harry Turtledove, Typecasting, →ISBN:

     Some of the actors were locals, others outsiders who odd-jobbed it while they performed.

   • 2016, Sarah Lotz, Skin Deep, →ISBN:

     We were inseparable. Came down to London together, lived in a squat together, odd-jobbed together to pay our way while I was at art college and she studied to be an actuary.