sweatshop

noun

sweat·​shop ˈswet-ˌshäp How to pronounce sweatshop (audio)
: a shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions

Examples of sweatshop in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web The film looks at how the young man’s dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled into the U.S. and sold to a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles. Brent Lang, Variety, 15 Mar. 2024 For example, in the 1990s, accused of working with Asian contractors using child labor in sweatshop conditions, Nike initially denied the reports. Laurent Belsie, The Christian Science Monitor, 6 Feb. 2024 Born into a working-class Polish family — her father, William Michael Jones, was a laborer at the old National Brewing Co., and her mother, Anna Potter Jones, a sweatshop seamstress — Gloria Theresa Mildred Jones was born at home in the 2700 block of Dillon Street in Canton. Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 10 Jan. 2024 This issue also goes back centuries, including Irish men to work building canals and railroads before the Civil War, women from southern and eastern Europe for the burgeoning garment industry sweatshops of old New York, and Slavs from the same regions for mines, steel mills and heavy manufacturing. Edward Lotterman, Twin Cities, 14 Jan. 2024 The exposure of the sweatshop was initially a scary prospect, Clinton said. Kimmy Yam, NBC News, 22 Sep. 2023 Advertisement Rainmaker Hall is the central meeting space, created inside an old hangar that was once a sweatshop with high, arching beams. Anita Chabria, Los Angeles Times, 26 Dec. 2023 Depressingly, Lorenz seems to believe that recording videos that hawk clothes made in an Indonesian sweatshop fulfills some kind of liberatory ideal. Alexander Nazaryan, Los Angeles Times, 2 Oct. 2023 Fires, as the name suggests, were a constant threat to workers in the crowded sweatshops, printing plants and factory lofts stacked within its 19th-century buildings. Zoë Lescaze, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sweatshop.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1884, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of sweatshop was in 1884

Dictionary Entries Near sweatshop

Cite this Entry

“Sweatshop.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweatshop. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

sweatshop

noun
sweat·​shop -ˌshäp How to pronounce sweatshop (audio)
: a shop or factory in which employees work long hours at low wages under unhealthy conditions

More from Merriam-Webster on sweatshop

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