Drudgery ***

drudgery







Y

苦工,賤役



D



–noun

menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work.  



—Synonyms 

See work.



Work, drudgery, labor, toil refer to exertion of body or mind in performing or accomplishing something. 



Work is the general word and may apply to exertion that is either easy or hard: fun work; heavy work. 



Drudgery suggests continuous, dreary, and dispiriting work, 

esp. 

of a menial or servile (奴顏卑膝) kind: the drudgery of [household] tasks. 



Labor particularly denotes hard manual work: labor on a farm, in a steel mill. 



Toil suggests wearying or exhausting labor: toil that breaks down the worker's [health].





　

For all of Assayas' impressive facility, 



the movie never transcends its hackneyed [scenario]. 



Seeking to [unearth] the profundities 

immanent [in] the mundane, 



Assayas' movie ends up evaporating from memory days after the fact -- like much of the drudgery of [everyday] life.



Ultimately, the movie comes to seem irritatingly mannered.





stultify

Menial work can stultify the mind.  

stifle 

to stifle a [yawn]

muffle

to muffle [drums].

muffled [in] silk.  

stilted

Tony



pang

[a] pang of [remorse] 

hunger pang[s] cf. fang

travail 

the [pangs] of [childbirth]

respite

to [toil] without respite 

menstrual

menstrual [cramp][s]

Beleaguer



insipidness

bathetic 

commonplace (dull, ordinary, platitudinous)

banal (inane, pointless)

hackneyed (stale and worn out through overuse)

trite 

[true] but trite

Tenuous