worker

Etymology

From Middle English werkere, worcher, wercher, equivalent to work + -er. Displaced the older term wright, from Old English wyrhta.

noun

1. A person who performs labor for a living, especially manual labor.
   Writer Ta Chen, in a statistical study of industrial labor in China in 1933, recorded that 66.6 percent of the total number of workers in the four main industrial regions of Kwangtung were women. In Shun-te, 81.2 percent of the labor force were women. 1986, Janice G. Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection, Boston: Beacon Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 124
   Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese […] began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. The poisoning was irreversible, and soon ended in psychosis and death. Nowadays workers are exposed to far lower doses and manganism is rare. 21 April 2014, “Subtle effects”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8884
   Although the radiation levels identified are high, a threat to human health is very unlikely because apart from workers at the site, no-one goes there. 2 February 2017, Jeff Farrell, “Fukushima nuclear disaster: Lethal levels of radiation detected in leak seven years after plant meltdown in Japan”, in The Independent, London
2. A nonreproductive social insect, such as ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
   1. (rare) A female ant, bee, termite or wasp.
3. (computing) A thread performing one instance of a particular task within a program.
   This FTP client spawns a separate worker for each file to be uploaded.