Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. (context idiomatic English) Work (especially that which is heavy, repetitive or mindless) that is considered undesirable and therefore delegated to underlings.
Usage examples of "grunt work".
Something about those sophisticated boxer shorts teemed a little out of place on a guy who did grunt work on a horse farm.
The fact that the prince would be unable to fire military bead rounds out of it when he ran out of chemical-powered ammo had been a big part of it, but so had the sheer grunt work involved in lugging along the cases of ammunition the prince (still in original, patented, pain-in-the-ass mode) had insisted on bringing down to the planet.
Baruk would never be such a fool as to task you with anything - except grunt work.
Baruk would never be such a fool as to task you with anythingexcept grunt work.
At least in a military ship they can reroute the fixed control runs, although that's going to take a week or more, with most of the Company pitching in alongside the crew to do, pardon the pun, grunt work.
Machines did what Jessup called the grunt work, but nothing replaced a human on the work at hand.
Shiftfire, give me the materials, the tools, ten guys who know what they're doing and a whole big bunch of people to do the grunt work, and I could have put this up my own self in a couple three days.
Three slight Sullustans made up the core engineering and technical expertise on the base, while five stocky Ugnaughts were there for grunt work.
Archeology's an expensive sport even with volunteers doing the grunt work.
Being a Sergeant will absolve me of the grunt work I did enough of as a kid and also keep the weight of a commission off my shoulders.
In fact, commissioned officers were almost begging Barstow to let them help out with the grunt work just to avoid sitting around on their hands.
Basically invite a lot of friends over and make them do grunt work, then feed them pizza afterward.