The Collaborative International Dictionary
manual labor \manual labor\, manual labour \manual labour\n. Labor done with the hands.
Wiktionary
alt. Physical work done "by hand" (or using basic implements) instead of by machines, usually implying it is unskilled or physically demanding. n. Physical work done "by hand" (or using basic implements) instead of by machines, usually implying it is unskilled or physically demanding.
WordNet
n. labor done with the hands [syn: manual labour]
Usage examples of "manual labor".
He scrubbed and broomed and brushed until everything was spotless, letting himself swoop into the humility of manual labor that was the beginning of the cha-no-yu, where the host alone was required to make everything faultless.
If we want to appraise their power in France at the close of the eighteenth century we must add to the notables the half- notables of society, namely, the men who, like the people, were devoted to manual labor, but who, among the people, led the way, say one hundred and fifty thousand families, consisting of well-to-do farmers, small rural proprietors, shopkeepers, retailers, foremen and master-workmen, village syndics and guild syndics,[82] those who were established and had some capital, owning a plot of land and a house, with a business or stock of tools, and a set of customers, that is to say, with something ahead and credit, not being obliged to live from hand to mouth, and therefore, beginning to be .
These kids would be placed when they turned seventeen by Creedish overseers in the outside world who found them jobs as manual labor or domestic help on a cash-pay basis.
This time his job turned out to be both easier and harder than manual labor.
They had to be assigned manual labor, such of it as they could bear.
And I know you're as well aware as I am that we have plenty of cheap manual labor available.
Within the same lifetime a society for the first time in human history not only threw off the yoke of agriculture, but managed within a few brief decades to throw off the yoke of manual labor as well.
He did not have the strength for the heavy manual labor involved in the cutting.
On the other hand, she did not have a lot of time to fret over the delay, since in addition to planning the mural and her other duties of teaching and taking turns in the manual labor of the community (chicken shed, kitchen, and clean-up crews&mdash.
On the other hand, she did not have a lot of time to fret over the delay, since in addition to planning the mural and her other duties of teaching and taking turns in the manual labor of the community (chicken shed, kitchen, and clean-up crews—.
Without sophisticated machinery, they required a great deal of manual labor.
So I decided to work off my frustration with some long-postponed manual labor: unpacking several big boxes of old science fiction magazines I'd purchased for my editing work and filing them away.
Nimmo and Foster lugged it in with the grunting of men unused to manual labor.