Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
make-work \make-work\ n. Active work of litle value, such as assignments given by teachers to students to keep them busy while the teacher performs other tasks, or chores performed to while away time; also called busywork.
Syn: busywork.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1913 (adj.); 1937 (n.), "busy-work, activity of no value," American English, from the verbal expression to make work (see make (v.) + work (n.)).\n\nA big fire devoured a street; "It will make work," I heard my father say; a ship was lost at sea laden with silk, and leather, and cloth; "It will make work," said my father; a reservoir broke jail, and swept the heart of the town away. "It will make work," my mother said; so all human calamities were softened blessings to me; they made "work," and work made wages, and wages made bread and potatoes, and clothes for me. ["The Radical Review," Chicago, Sept. 15, 1883] \n
Wiktionary
n. (context chiefly US English) An activity or task assigned or undertaken for the sake of activity or busy-ness, rather than because of a particular need. (from 20th c.)
WordNet
n. active work of little value; "while he was waiting he filled the days with busywork" [syn: busywork]
Usage examples of "make-work".
They are low, really, and we can keep them that way because our revenue goes to things other than fine new jails, federal grants and programs, make-work projects, investigating the sexual habits of a grubworm, and pork-barrel boondoggles.
And here he sat, twiddling his thumbs with make-work yard projects, babysitting the sexiest woman alive.
I hadn't been classed as too dumb and useless for anything but make-work.
He had actually let her sit around doing make-work most of the afternoon, only to call her in at twenty minutes till five and load the copying for this stupid presentation package that mysteriously required very elaborate collating and had to be ready for his review by seven the next morning.
Koffield had given them a few make-work jobs, and stuck them with most of the dreariest drudge work of plowing through datafiles—but Anton Koffield had been doing all the real work, and there was no sense in pretending otherwise.
And they would have been able to do some real work up here, instead of the small-scale make-work experiments they'd had to run: monitoring herself for drug metabolism by taking saliva samples, checking for radiation health with miniature dosimeters strapped to her body, checking her respiration during exercises on the treadmill, investigating the relationship between bone density and venous pressure by wearing dumb little tourniquets around her ankle.
And they would have been able to do some real work up here, instead of the small-scale make-work experiments they'd had to run: monitoring herself for drug metabolism by taking saliva samples, checking for radiation health with miniature dosimeters strapped to her body, checking her respiration during exercises on the treadmill, investigating the relationship between bone density and venous pressure by wearing dumb little tourniquets around her ankle .
It was a make-work job, it being Lazarus' notion of temporary occupational therapy.