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paperwork

nouncommon in dialogue

  • //ˈpeɪ.pɚˌwɝk//
  • //ˈpeɪ.pɚ.wɚk//

Routine work involving written documents.

noun

  1. 1

    Routine work involving written documents.

    do paperwork

  2. 2

    Written documents.

    The source stated that the alleged victims wanted the paperwork released after the settlement, but with names and identifiers removed.

  3. 3

    figurativeExcessive paperwork, busy work, red tape.

  4. 4

    slangCourt documents or pre-sentencing investigation reports detailing the prisoner's criminal history (usually in the context of discerning whether an inmate has been charged for sex-related offenses or is likely to be an informant).

    to have bad paperwork

  5. 5

    A work in paper.

    Greatly you haue boaſted of, and much threatned theſe two places, (for euery later paperwork of yours is but a Tautology of the former) […]

    However, except for few experimental paperworks by Jackson Pollock on paper made by Douglass Howell and occasional prints, usually woodcuts or wood engravings on Japanese paper, it is only in the late 1950s and early 1960s that editions of prints on beautiful handmade papers began appearing, published by Tatyana Grosman at the Universal Limited Art Editions on Long Island.

    In listing dimensions for the paperworks, height precedes width, followed by depth; and dimensions for multi-unit pieces are for the entire work.

    Rob Moore is nationally and internationally known for his painting and for his paperworks.

Etymology

From paper + work.

Forms

plural
paperworks
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).