homework term meaning

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Definition of homework

Examples of homework in a sentence.

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

Word History

1662, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Dictionary Entries Near homework

Cite this entry.

“Homework.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homework. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of homework, more from merriam-webster on homework.

Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for homework

Nglish: Translation of homework for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of homework for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about homework

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Definition of homework noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• I always do my homework on the bus.
• physics/geography/French, etc. homework
• I still haven't done my geography homework.
• How much homework do you get?
• for homework I have to write up the notes for homework.
• (especially North American English) I have to finish this homework assignment .
• acquire/​get/​lack (an) education/​training/ (British English) (some) qualifications
• receive/​provide somebody with training/​tuition
• develop/​design/​plan a curriculum/ (especially British English) course/ (North American English) program/​syllabus
• give/​go to/​attend a class/​lesson/​lecture/​seminar
• hold/​run/​conduct a class/​seminar/​workshop
• sign up for/​take a course/​classes/​lessons
• go to/​start preschool/​kindergarten/​nursery school
• be in (North American English) the first, second, etc. grade/ (British English) year 1, 2. etc. (at school)
• study/​take/​drop history/​chemistry/​German, etc.
• (British English) leave/​finish/​drop out of/ (North American English) quit school
• (North American English) graduate high school/​college
• be the victim/​target of bullying
• (British English) play truant from/ (both British English, informal) bunk off/​skive off school (= not go to school when you should)
• (both especially North American English) skip/​cut class/​school
• (British English) cheat in/ (North American English) cheat on an exam/​a test
• get/​be given a detention (for doing something)
• be expelled from/​be suspended from school
• do your homework/ (British English) revision/​a project on something
• work on/​write/​do/​submit an essay/​a dissertation/​a thesis/​an assignment/ (North American English) a paper
• finish/​complete your dissertation/​thesis/​studies/​coursework
• hand in/ (North American English) turn in your homework/​essay/​assignment/​paper
• study/​prepare/ (British English) revise/ (North American English) review/ (North American English, informal) cram for a test/​an exam
• take/ (both British English) do/​sit a test/​an exam
• (especially British English) mark/ (especially North American English) grade homework/​a test
• (British English) do well in/ (North American English) do well on/ (especially North American English, informal) ace a test/​an exam
• pass/​fail/ (especially North American English, informal) flunk a test/​an exam/​a class/​a course/​a subject
• apply to/​get into/​go to/​start college/ (British English) university
• leave/​graduate from law school/​college/ (British English) university (with a degree in computer science)
• study for/​take/ (British English) do/​complete a law degree/​a degree in physics
• (both North American English) major/​minor in biology/​philosophy
• earn/​receive/​be awarded/​get/​have/​hold a master’s degree/​a bachelor’s degree/​a PhD in economics
• Have you finished your homework?
• Have you done your physics homework yet?
• I was helping my sister with her maths homework.
• The homework assignments are worth 10% of the final grade.
• I have some homework to do on the Civil War.
• I want you to hand in this homework on Friday.
• The science teacher always gives a lot of homework.
• They get a lot of homework in English.
• They get masses of homework at secondary school.
• We had to write out one of the exercises for homework.
• for homework
• homework  on

Questions about grammar and vocabulary?

Find the answers with Practical English Usage online, your indispensable guide to problems in English.

• You could tell that he had really done his homework (= found out all he needed to know) .

Nearby words

Definition of 'homework'

Video: pronunciation of homework

homework in American English

Homework in british english, examples of 'homework' in a sentence homework, related word partners homework, trends of homework.

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• homeward journey
• homework assignment
• homework club
• homework diary
• All ENGLISH words that begin with 'H'

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• do homework
• school homework
• homework exercise
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home•work

An assignment is a task that someone is given to do, usually as part of their job.

An assignment is also a piece of academic work given to students.

In American English, an assignment is also a piece of work given to students to do at home.

Work given to schoolchildren to do at home is also called homework .

Be Careful! Homework is an uncountable noun. You do not talk about 'homeworks' or 'a homework'. Note that you do not say ' I have made my homework '. You say 'I have done my homework'.

Homework is work that school pupils are given to do at home. You say that pupils do homework. Don't say that they ' make homework '.

Housework is work such as cleaning or washing that is done in a house.

Be Careful! Both homework and housework are uncountable nouns. Don't talk about ' a homework ' or ' houseworks '.

• assignability
• best of all
• brain-teaser
• change magnitude
• concentrate
• homeshoring
• homesickness
• Home-speaking
• Homestead Act
• homestead exemption
• homestead law
• homesteader
• homesteading
• homestretch
• Homeward bound
• homeward(s)
• homeward-bound
• homework problem
• homeworking
• homewrecker
• homichlophobia
• homicide bomber
• Homicide by misadventure
• homicidomania
• homiletical
• homing adaptor
• homing device
• homing guidance
• hometraining
• Hometronic Internet Module
• HomeVestors of America, Inc.
• Homeward Bound
• Homeward Bound (disambiguation)
• Homeward Bound Animal Rescue Inc.
• Homeward Bound Greyhound Association
• Homeward Bound Theatre Company
• Homeward Trail Bible Camp
• homeward-boundly
• Homewood City Schools
• Homewood Institutional Review Board
• Homewood Maitland Safety Association
• Homewood Musical Instrument Co.
• Homewood-Flossmoor Swim Club, Inc.
• Homework Access Line
• Homework assignment
• Homework Assistance Hotline
• Homework Center
• Homework Diary
• Homework help
• Homework hotline
• Homeworkers
• Homeworkers Organized for More Employment
• Homeworkers' Union and Small Business Association
• Homeworking
• Facebook Share

• 1.1 Etymology
• 1.2 Pronunciation
• 1.3.1 Usage notes
• 1.3.2 Hypernyms
• 1.3.3 Coordinate terms
• 1.3.4 Derived terms
• 1.3.5 Translations
• 1.4 See also
• 1.5 References
• 1.6 Anagrams

English [ edit ]

Etymology [ edit ].

From home +‎ work .

Pronunciation [ edit ]

• ( Received Pronunciation ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈhəʊmˌwɜːk/
• ( General American ) IPA ( key ) : /ˈhoʊmˌwɝk/

Noun [ edit ]

homework ( usually uncountable , plural homeworks )

• 2013 July 1, Peter Wilby , “Finland's education ambassador spreads the word”, in The Guardian ‎ [1] , archived from the original on 2022-10-15 : Even 15-year-olds do no more than 30 minutes' homework a night.
• 2023 January 12, Kevin Roose, “Don't Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It.”, in The New York Times ‎ [2] , archived from the original on 2023-01-17 : And I'm sympathetic to teachers who feel that they have enough to worry about, without adding A.I.-generated homework to the mix.
• 2012 April 10, John Hudson, “North Korea Has a Clumsy Way of Soothing Concerns About Its Rocket Launch”, in The Atlantic ‎ [3] , archived from the original on 2022-01-22 : Since the whole world is watching this launch, they probably should've done some homework on their talking points.
• 2017 May 9, “Mindful sex is better sex, says B.C. researcher promoting new workbook”, in CBC News ‎ [4] , archived from the original on 2022-11-22 : Four years after her first sexual health book came out, Dr. Lori Brotto is giving her readers a little bit of homework for the bedroom.
• 2022 July 18, Donald Mcrae , quoting Michael Yormark, “Roc Nation's Michael Yormark on Romelu Lukaku: 'You have to play to his strengths... I don't think that happened'”, in The Guardian ‎ [5] , archived from the original on 2022-12-26 : I didn't even know who he was until I did my homework and realised he was a premier footballer for Bayern.
• 2023 August 7, Suzanne Wrack , “England beat Nigeria on penalties to reach Women’s World Cup quarter-finals”, in The Guardian ‎ [6] : Nigeria had done their homework and were well organised. Halimatu Ayinde was exceptional in her marking of James, who had scored twice and provided three assists as she ran the show against China.
• 1989 , Eileen Boris, Cynthia R. Daniels, Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home , University of Illinois Press , →ISBN , page 241 : Hatch perceived homework to be one tool—along with various workfare schemes and private sector training programs—that would take women off welfare and make poor women "independent."
• 1933 , James T. Farrell , Gas-House McGinty , page 186 : My wife and I want a kid, and we do plenty of homework , but goddamn it, Dutch, I just can't connect.
• ( BDSM ) Tasks assigned by a dominant for a submissive to perform when they are physically away from their dominant or otherwise free.

Usage notes [ edit ]

• ( exercises assigned by a teacher ) The term homework generally implies that the work is mandatory and worth marks; exercises that are optional are usually referred to as practice problems , review problems , extra practice , exercises , etc.
• ( exercises assigned by a teacher ) Work of a larger scale than homework (which involves a series of relatively simple exercises) is usually referred to as an assignment or project .

Hypernyms [ edit ]

Coordinate terms [ edit ], derived terms [ edit ].

• bit of homework
• do one's homework
• homework club
• homework diary
• piece of homework
• the dog ate my homework

Translations [ edit ]

See also [ edit ], references [ edit ], anagrams [ edit ].

• English compound terms
• English 2-syllable words
• English terms with IPA pronunciation
• English terms with audio links
• English lemmas
• English nouns
• English uncountable nouns
• English countable nouns
• English terms with usage examples
• English terms with quotations
• English terms with rare senses
• English slang
• English euphemisms
• English endocentric compounds
• en:Education
• English entries with topic categories using raw markup
• English entries with language name categories using raw markup
• Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations
• Hindi terms with non-redundant manual transliterations
• Urdu terms with redundant transliterations

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homework noun

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What does the noun homework mean?

There are three meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun homework . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

How common is the noun homework ?

How is the noun homework pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the noun homework come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the noun homework is in the mid 1600s.

OED's earliest evidence for homework is from 1653, in the writing of Edmund Chillenden, parliamentarian army officer and General Baptist leader.

homework is formed within English, by compounding.

Etymons: home n. 1 , work n.

Nearby entries

• homeward-bounder, n. 1837–
• homeward-bound pennant, n. 1853–
• homewardly, adv. 1797–
• homewards, adv. & adj. Old English–
• homeware, n. 1782–
• home waters, n. 1838–
• home wear, n. 1836–
• home-whining, n. a1657
• home wind, n. 1732–
• home-woe, n. 1838–
• homework, n. 1653–
• homework club, n. 1900–
• homework diary, n. 1973–
• homeworker, n. 1843–
• homeworking, n. 1844–
• home-working, adj. 1850–
• home worship, n. 1849–
• homewort, n. Old English–
• home-wreck, n. 1845–
• home-wrecker, n. 1878–
• home-wrecking, n. 1878–

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Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for homework, n..

homework, n. was revised in September 2011.

homework, n. was last modified in September 2023.

oed.com is a living text, updated every three months. Modifications may include:

• further revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
• new senses, phrases, and quotations.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into homework, n. in September 2023.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

A Supplement to the New English Dictionary (1933)

• Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

• View homework in OED Second Edition

Please submit your feedback for homework, n.

Please include your email address if you are happy to be contacted about your feedback. OUP will not use this email address for any other purpose.

Citation details

Factsheet for homework, n., browse entry.

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noun as in assignment

Strongest matches

• appointment

Strong matches

noun as in drill

• conditioning
• preparation
• constitutional
• instruction
• run through

Weak matches

• daily dozen
• learning by doing

noun as in lesson

noun as in practice

noun as in preparation

• arrangement
• construction
• establishment
• preparedness
• qualification
• anticipation
• expectation
• manufacture
• substructure
• getting ready
• making ready
• putting in order

noun as in revision

• improvement
• modification
• reconsideration
• reexamination
• rectification
• retrospection
• overhauling

Discover More

Example sentences.

Now, they log on to Zoom from their bedrooms, surrounded by unfinished homework assignments and tattered stuffed animals, waiting to be assigned calls, texts and emails by the trained therapists who oversee the program.

Yow started her homework and saw Frese had gone 35-22 with two winning seasons at Ball State, which hadn’t had a winning record in its previous nine seasons.

Do some homework before investing in a diamond, and that lifelong commitment.

Another poster included an image of their losses over what appeared to be online math homework.

As we countdown to Inauguration Day, I've been doing my homework—and looking to the past for inspiration.

“I can help my children with their homework and sometimes we text in English at my job,” Santos says.

Scheunemann, meanwhile, had no idea who Spencer was, and did some homework.

She jumped at the chance to watch RT, or jumped at the chance to skip calculus homework.

And we encourage parent-student “contracts,” for class attendance, homework submission and even extra-curriculum activities.

Adicéam did his homework, spending 50 days collecting pieces, many with unexpected stories behind them.

Much of this homework is done by a very bad light and the boy's eyes suffer much.

For homework we have prepared alphabets where the letters are printed in type-writing order.

His parents were always getting angry with him for losing his clothes, or his toys, or his homework.

Only at the time when he was going to Beauregard School, with his homework.

And once a week or twice a week she was sending her homework or something to him.

Related Words

Words related to homework are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word homework . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

noun as in responsibility, task

noun as in practice, exercise

noun as in information taught

noun as in exercise, application

Viewing 5 / 7 related words

On this page you'll find 166 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to homework, such as: appointment, chore, drill, duty, job, and position.

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

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What does 'Sapphic' mean? An ancient term is having a modern moment

When people look at images captured by Ty Busey, the photographer says she wants them to know that the pictures and films were captured by a queer woman. Drawing on Renaissance paintings as inspiration, Busey poses her subjects, who are LGBTQ women and nonbinary people, with halos and textured backgrounds in lounging postures. She describes her artistic eye in one word: “Sapphic.”

The term derives from Sappho, a lyrical poet who lived in ancient Greece and created verses about pursuing women lovers that were rich in sensuality and nostalgia — and even libertine at times.

The style of Busey’s work is a fitting way to rectify its namesake’s historical legacy. In the hundreds of years after her death around 570 B.C.E., Sappho was often portrayed in art as heterosexual when her own poetry said otherwise.

When asked what she hopes viewers take away from her visuals, Busey said, “I want the person watching the video to be like, ‘Yes, this is what it feels like to be with a woman.’”

Busey, a Maryland resident who has identified as a lesbian since she was a teenager, first learned about the label “Sapphic” on TikTok in 2021. In the years since she’s embraced the term, it has abounded, appearing on social media meme pages , as a literary genre , as a descriptor for events in brick and mortar spaces and even as a noun for self-identification.

Over two-and-a-half millennia removed from its namesake, the term Sapphic does not have a precise definition that’s agreed upon by all of those who currently embrace it. However, its current use is generally as an umbrella term for lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals and other women-loving women, and for transgender and nonbinary people who may not identify as women themselves but align with this spectrum of attraction and community. 

While Sapphic may evoke ancient images of romance, it has a lesser-known political undercurrent: The poet Sappho resisted tyranny in her own era by the military general Pittacus, making her a potent queer symbol during a tenuous time for LGBTQ rights.

A rebirth on the internet

Describing herself as “chronically online,” Tyler Mead, 28, said she learned about the term Sapphic “funnily enough, actually, on the internet.”

As a singer, songwriter and producer under the moniker STORYBOARDS , she came across queer artists like Fletcher using the term. 

“It got me intrigued, and I was like, ‘What does this term mean? What does this mean to them? And, what could it also mean for me?’ Because it’s been a bit of a journey for me of coming out in multiple layers,” Mead said.

In 2018, Mead came out as pansexual, then in 2020 as a trans woman. For the past year, she’s identified as a lesbian and as Sapphic, which she said captures a philosophy of “softness” in her approach to romance and dating. 

“An interesting part of being a trans woman who is Sapphic is that, even before I started transitioning, I always knew that I was attracted to women … but not in a straight way,” Mead, who lives in Los Angeles, said.

The expansiveness of the term, she explained, is a strong draw, adding that she knows people who are trans masculine that use it. 

A songwriter since middle school, Mead not only considers her music Sapphic but sums up her entire “energy” on the bio section of her TikTok profile as: “Sapphic fairy.”

Related stories:

• A lesbian archive inside a Brooklyn brownstone has documented decades of Sapphic history
• Billie Eilish, Reneé Rapp, Phoebe Bridgers: Queer women finally get their due in music
• 10 trailblazing queer women to celebrate

The word “Sappho” appears to have first emerged digitally in 1987 on an early iteration of an email list, according to Avery Dame-Griff, curator of the Queer Digital History Project . 

The Greek poet, it seems, was the namesake of an English language mailing list for LGBTQ women during a time when email would have only been accessible to those in academic or computer-related fields, according to Dame-Griff. 

A name like Sappho, he explained, would have signaled that the mailing list was for queer women without using a term like “gay” or “lesbian,” which would have drawn unwanted attention. 

Since 2004, the first year for which Google Trends provides search data , the term “Sapphic” peaked in December 2005 before steadily declining for the next 15 years. Since 2020, however, it has been on a steady upward trajectory. 

Perhaps nowhere is the term currently more prominent than social media, where Sappho-themed meme accounts —  Sappho Was Here , Suffering Sappho Memes and Sapphic Sandwich , just to name a few — have amassed tens of thousands of followers on Instagram. And, on TikTok, a wildly popular social media platform among those in the 18-29 demo , the term has been hashtagged over 340,000 times.

Some of those hashtags lead to 26-year-old New Yorker Nina Haines. During the pandemic, Haines said, she was craving queer community. Unable to see LGBTQ friends in person because of Covid, she started posting about Sapphic literature on TikTok in an effort to find connection.

Then, in 2021, Haines founded Sapph-Lit , a book club that today boasts 8,200 members from over 60 countries, with members who identify as queer women and nonbinary people. Her book picks have included modern romances, like Casey McQuiston’s “I Kissed Shara Wheeler,” and classics like Audre Lorde’s “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.”

“At the end of the day, we really want to prioritize Sapphic literature, because Sapphics have been historically rendered invisible throughout history,” she said. 

For Haines, who has a tattoo of Sappho on her arm, the term Sapphic “captures the women-loving-women experience” in a way that is “rooted in history” and that signals “that we have always been here.”

A historical legacy 

Hailing from the Greek island of Lesbos and living from roughly 630 B.C.E. to 570 B.C.E., what is known of Sappho’s life comes from surviving fragments of her poetry and what was written about her by other ancients, according to Page duBois, the author of 1995’s “ Sappho Is Burning ” and a professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Sappho’s queer legacy, duBois added, emerges from an expression of romantic and sexual desire toward women in her poems, often with a tint of nostalgia.

“They are really lovely and project that kind of world of voluptuous, flower filled, scented eros [desire] directed toward women,” duBois said.

But a passive “pink, romantic Valentine” she was not. “An aggressive pursuer of her lover,” Sappho described intimate memories of a far away, beloved woman, according to duBois. 

“She talks about anointing her with beautiful ointments and putting garlands on her, and satisfying each other on soft beds,” duBois said of Fragment 94 of Sappho’s poetry.

There are contradictory interpretations that Sappho was a schoolteacher, an aristocrat or a hetaira (a sex worker who operated like a courtesan or geisha), and that she was perhaps enslaved. In the Middle Ages and Victorian periods, she was presented as heterosexual in art, portrayed as a forlorn woman who threw herself off a cliff after she was rejected by a ferryman she loved.

Finding a new generation

For the past 100 years, an ever-evolving lexicon — and a debate about the best terms to use — has been a consistent feature of LGBTQ culture. 

As far back as the 1920s, there are examples of “Sapphic” being used to advertise sexual entertainment, like sex shows, performed by women for a male audience. The term Sapphic can also be found in 1930s tabloid headlines , and several lesbian publications in the ‘70s and ‘80s incorporated the word Sappho in their names .

It became more common for women to identify as a “lesbian” in the 1960s, though there were earlier exceptions, according to Cookie Woolner, author of “ The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire Before Stonewall .”

Of course, butch, femme, dyke, stud and a host of other terms have been embraced by queer women, each shaped by the communities that created them and the social movements of their time. 

“Maybe in some ways, the terms are changing because it’s about a break from a past generation,” said Woolner, an associate professor of history at the University of Memphis.

Though Woolner and others have noted that there are those who eschew certain terms or identifiers, for one reason or another. Some LGBTQ women, for example, don’t identify with “Sapphic” due to a perceived chasteness and the ancient aura.

For the past three years, Busey has organized a “Sapphic picnic” outside of Washington, D.C. For this year, Busey chose the theme “For the Gods,” an ode to Greek gods and goddesses and conducted a photo shoot to match. 

“There’s something about those ancient photos and the way that they’re all falling on each other — I really love them so much,” she said. “I just want to recapture it specifically with women, especially if I could put a Black woman in there.”

More than 2,500 years after Sappho walked the earth, champions of the term Sapphic see the parallels between finding their own power and the erasure and subsequent embrace of the lyrical poet’s queer identity.

“I see her as this reclamation,” Haines said of Sappho. “As this statement of, ‘No, I actually mean the words that I say, and don’t twist them.’”

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Alex Berg is a freelance on-air host and journalist based in New York City.

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Joseph Stiglitz and the Meaning of Freedom

By John Cassidy

In the early days of the COVID -19 pandemic, when there was no vaccine in sight and more than a thousand people who had contracted the virus were dying each day in the United States, Joseph Stiglitz, the economics professor and Nobel laureate, was isolating with his wife at home, on the Upper West Side. Stiglitz, who is now eighty-one, was a high-risk individual, and he followed the government’s guidelines on masking and social distancing scrupulously. Not everyone did, of course, and on the political right there were complaints that the mask mandate, in particular, was an unjustified infringement on individual freedom. Stiglitz strongly disagreed. “I thought it was very clear that this was an example where one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom,” he told me recently. “Wearing a mask was a very little infringement on one person’s freedom, and not wearing a mask was potentially a large infringement on others.”

It also struck Stiglitz, who had served as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration, that the experience of the pandemic could provide an opportunity for a wide-ranging examination of the question of freedom and unfreedom, which he had been thinking about from an economic perspective for many years. The result is a new book, “ The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society ,” in which he seeks to reclaim the concept of freedom for liberals and progressives. “Freedom is an important value that we do and ought to cherish, but it is more complex and more nuanced than the Right’s invocation,” he writes. “The current conservative reading of what freedom means is superficial, misguided, and ideologically motivated. The Right claims to be the defender of freedom, but I’ll show that the way they define the word and pursue it has led to the opposite result, vastly reducing the freedoms of most citizens.”

Stiglitz’s title is a play on “ The Road to Serfdom ,” Friedrich Hayek’s famous jeremiad against socialism, published in 1944. In making his argument, Stiglitz takes the reader on a broad tour of economic thinking and recent economic history, which encompasses everyone from John Stuart Mill to Hayek and Milton Friedman— the author of the 1962 book “ Capitalism and Freedom ,” which has long been a free-market bible—to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump . The going can get a bit heavy when Stiglitz is explaining some tricky economic concepts, but his essential argument comes across very clearly. It is encapsulated in a quote from Isaiah Berlin, the late Oxford philosopher, which he cites on his first page and returns to repeatedly: “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”

Stiglitz begins not with pandemic-era mask mandates but with the American plague of gun violence. He notes that there is a simple reason why the United States has far more gun deaths than other countries do. It has far more guns, and, thanks to a tendentious reading of the Second Amendment by the courts, including the Supreme Court, many Americans now regard owning a gun, or even a closet full of semi-automatic rifles, as a constitutionally protected right. “The rights of one group, gun owners, are placed above what most others would view as a more fundamental right, the right to live,” Stiglitz writes. “To rephrase Isaiah Berlin’s quote . . . ‘Freedom for the gun owners has often meant death to schoolchildren and adults killed in mass shootings.’ ”

Gun violence and the spread of diseases by people who refuse to abide by health guidelines are examples of what economists call externalities, an awkward word that is derived from the fact that certain actions (such as refusing to wear a mask) or market transactions (such as the sale of a gun) can have negative (or positive) consequences to the outside world. “Externalities are everywhere,” Stiglitz writes. The biggest and most famous negative externalities are air pollution and climate change, which derive from the freedom of businesses and individuals to take actions that create harmful emissions. The argument for restricting this freedom, Stiglitz points out, is that doing so will “expand the freedom of people in later generations to exist on a livable planet without having to spend a huge amount of money to adapt to massive changes in climate and sea levels.”

In all these cases, Stiglitz argues, restrictions on behavior are justified by the over-all increase in human welfare and freedom that they produce. In the language of cost-benefit analysis, the costs in terms of infringing on individual freedom of action are much smaller than the societal benefits, so the net benefits are positive. Of course, many gun owners and anti-maskers would argue that this isn’t true. Pointing to the gun-violence figures and to scientific studies showing that masking and social distancing did make a difference to COVID -transmission rates, Stiglitz gives such arguments short shrift, and he insists that the real source of the dispute is a difference in values. “Are there responsible people who really believe that the right to not be inconvenienced by wearing a mask is more important than the right to live?” he asks.

In 2002, five years after he left the White House, Stiglitz published “ Globalization and Its Discontents ,” which was highly critical of the International Monetary Fund, a multilateral lending agency based in Washington. The book’s success—and the Nobel—turned him into a public figure, and, over the years, he followed it up with further titles on the global financial crisis, inequality, the cost of the war in Iraq, and other subjects. As a vocal member of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Stiglitz has expressed support for tighter financial regulations, international debt relief, the Green New Deal , and hefty taxes on very high incomes and large agglomerations of wealth.

During our sit-down interview, Stiglitz told me that, for a long time, he had cavilled at the negative conception of freedom used by conservative economists and politicians, which referred primarily to the ability to escape taxation, regulation, and other forms of government compulsion. As an economist accustomed to thinking in theoretical terms, Stiglitz conceived of freedom as expanding “opportunity sets”—the range of options that people can choose from—which are usually bounded, in the final analysis, by individuals’ incomes. Once you reframe freedom in this more positive sense, anything that reduces a person’s range of choices, such as poverty, joblessness, or illness, is a grave restriction on liberty. Conversely, policies that expand people’s opportunities to make choices, such as income-support payments and subsidies for worker training or higher education, enhance freedom.

Adopting this framework in “The Road to Freedom,” Stiglitz reserves his harshest criticisms for the free-market economists, conservative politicians, and business lobbying groups, who, over the past couple of generations, have used arguments about expanding freedom to promote policies that have benefitted rich and powerful interests at the expense of society at large. These policies have included giving tax cuts to wealthy individuals and big corporations, cutting social programs, starving public projects of investment, and liberating industrial and financial corporations from regulatory oversight. Among the ills that have resulted from this conservative agenda, Stiglitz identifies soaring inequality, environmental degradation, the entrenchment of corporate monopolies, the 2008 financial crisis, and the rise of dangerous right-wing populists like Donald Trump. These baleful outcomes weren’t ordained by any laws of nature or laws of economics, he says. Rather, they were “a matter of choice, a result of the rules and regulations that had governed our economy. They had been shaped by decades of neoliberalism , and it was neoliberalism that was at fault.”

Stiglitz’s approach to freedom isn’t exactly new, of course. Rousseau famously remarked that “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” In “ Development as Freedom ,” published in 1999, the Harvard economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argued, in the context of debates about poverty and economic growth in developing economies, that the goal of development should be to expand people’s “capabilities,” which he defined as their opportunities to do things like nourish themselves, get educated, and exercise political freedoms. “The Road to Freedom” falls in this tradition, which includes another noted philosopher, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Stiglitz cites Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, delivered in January, 1941, in which the President added freedom from want and freedom from fear to freedom of speech and freedom of worship as fundamental liberties that all people should enjoy.

“A person facing extremes of want and fear is not free,” Stiglitz writes. He describes how, at a high-school reunion, he spoke with former classmates from the city he grew up in—Gary, Indiana, which had once been a thriving center of steel production. “When they graduated from high school, they said, they had planned to get a job at the mill just like their fathers. But with another economic downturn hitting they had no choice —no freedom—but to join the military . . . . Deindustrialization was taking away manufacturing jobs, leaving mainly opportunities that made use of their military training, such as the police force.”

Among the hats Stiglitz wears is one as chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. He doesn’t claim to have a surefire recipe for reviving rusting American steel towns. But in the second half of “The Road to Freedom” he calls for the creation of a “progressive capitalism” that would look nothing like the neoliberal variant he has spent the past two decades excoriating. In this “good society,” the government would employ a full range of tax, spending, and regulatory policies to reduce inequality, rein in corporate power, and develop the sorts of capital that don’t appear in G.D.P. figures or corporate profit-and-loss statements: human capital (education), social capital (norms and institutions that foster trust and coöperation), and natural capital (environmental resources, such as a stable climate and clean air). Not-for-profits and workers’ coöperatives would play a larger role than they do now, particularly in sectors where the profit motive can easily lead to abuses, such as caregiving for the sick and elderly.

In political terms, Stiglitz started out as a self-described centrist. Over the years, he has shifted to the left and become ever more gimlet-eyed about how policies and laws are made and upheld, and whom they benefit. In “The Road to Freedom,” he inveighs against the Supreme Court for adopting the perspective of the “white male slave-owning drafters of the Constitution,” and reminds us that conservative billionaires and major corporations underwrote the neoliberal policy revolution, which bestowed upon big corporations what Stiglitz refers to as “The Freedom to Exploit.” He writes, “We cannot divorce the current distribution of income and wealth from the current and historical distribution of power.”

Given this conjuncture, and the rise of authoritarian populists like Trump, Orbán , and Bolsonaro , it is easy to get fatalistic about the prospects for creating the “good society” that Stiglitz describes, in which “freedoms of citizens to flourish, to live up to their potential . . . are most expansive.” He’s under no illusion that winning the battle of ideas would be sufficient to bring about such a transformation. But he’s surely right when he writes that, if “we successfully dismantle the myths about freedom that have been propagated by the Right,” and reshape the popular conception of human liberty in a more mutual and positive direction, it would be an important first step.

And how likely is that? In his book, Stiglitz lists a number of reasons to be pessimistic, including the fact that “neoliberal ideology runs deep in society,” and that people stubbornly “discount information that runs counter to their preconceptions and presumptions.” On the positive side, he points to a widespread rejection, particularly among younger people, of the neoliberal approach to issues like inequality and climate change. During our conversation, he cited the Biden Administration’s industrial policy, which provides generous incentives to green-energy producers and purchasers of electric vehicles, as an example of a “sea change” in views about economic policymaking. “Neoliberalism is on the defensive,” he said. However, he also noted the enduring power of simplistic slogans about freedom and averred that he didn’t want to sound like a Pollyanna. “I am optimistic, over-all,” he said. “But it is going to be a battle.” ♦

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Hollywood & media deaths in 2024: photo gallery & obituaries, taylor swift explains meaning behind ‘tortured poets’ songs including “fortnight”, “florida” & more.

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Taylor Swift is opening up about the inspiration behind several of her tracks on her 11th studio album Tortured Poets Department.

In an Amazon Music commentary , Swift said the album’s opening song “Fortnight”, a team-up with Post Malone, “exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album, one of which being fatalism, longing, pining away, lost dreams.”

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She said she “always imagined” that “Fortnight” occurred in an “American town where the American Dream you thought would happen to you didn’t.”

“You ended up not with the person you loved and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what would’ve been, maybe seeing them out,” she explained. “And that’s a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective.”

She also talked about the song “Clara Bow”. Named after the silent film actress, Swift said “Clara Bow” is “a commentary on what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time.”

“I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these architypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”

In “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” Swift said she used a metaphor “from the perspective of a child’s toy being somebody’s favorite toy until they break you, and then don’t want to play with you anymore.”

“Florida!!!”, featuring Florence + the Machine, is not inspired by a former relationship, but rather her experiences from “always watching Dateline.” Swift said she pondered the question of ” What happens when your life doesn’t fit, or your choices you’ve made catch up to you, and you’re surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment, and circumstances did not lead you to where you thought you’d be and you just want to escape from everything you’ve ever known? Is there a place you could go?”

“I’m always watching  Dateline ,” she continued. “People have these crimes that they commit, where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. And I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks: ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.'”

The Tortured Poets Department broke streaming records when it was released on April 19. It became the first album in Spotify history to reach more than 300 million streams in a single day, according to the platform.

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Why is 4/20 the unofficial weed day? The history behind April 20 and marijuana

The favorite day of stoners across the globe is upon us: April 20 or 4/20 , also known as weed day, is this Saturday.

Coincidentally falling on the same weekend as National Cold Brew Day and National Record Store Day, Saturday is shaping up to be something of a paradise for weed, coffee and music fans alike.

But how did an otherwise random day in April somehow become the mecca of marijuana enjoyment? Many theories have swirled over the years. While more exciting ones harken the holiday back to police busts or hidden messages in classic songs, the widely accepted origin is a little more reminiscent of a classic high school experience.

How did 4/20 become the official unofficial weed holiday? Here's what we know.

420 deals: Celebrate 4/20 with food deals at Wingstop, Popeyes, more. Or sip Snoop Dogg's THC drinks

What does 420 mean?

420 refers to the day 4/20, or April 20. The date has come to be known as the official stoner holiday on which marijuana smokers celebrate their love of bud.

The number 420 itself has also come to be associated with marijuana and smoking and is often used as a colloquial term for the flower and the act of consuming it.

Smokers see 4/20 not only as a day to kick back and celebrate their love of the stuff, but also to push for broader legalization and decriminalization of marijuana federally in the U.S. and beyond.

Where is weed legal? The states where recreational, medicinal marijuana is allowed in 2024

Why is 420 associated with weed?

You may have heard some of the most popular rumors that have circled the cultural zeitgeist over the years: that 420 is the code police used to describe marijuana smoking; 420 is the number of active chemicals in weed that get you high; April 20 was Bob Marley's birthday (it wasn't); that it's a reference to Bob Dylan’s song “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” (12 times 35 equals 420).

In reality, it's much simpler and perhaps less exciting than any of that.

While no one can say for certain, one widely accepted origin traces back to a group of teenagers hanging out after school.

In the early '70s, five students at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California would meet outside of the school after extracurricular activities had ended for the day. The group, eventually called the "Waldos," simply for the fact they met by a wall to do their thing, made their official meeting time 4:20 p.m. and eventually started using 420 as code for smoking.

One of the Waldo members, Dave Reddix, later got work as a roadie for the Grateful Dead, and the band helped to popularize the term, he told Time. Specifically, a flyer distributed by a group of Oakland Deadheads in December 1990 inviting people to smoke on April 20 at 4:20 p.m. did the trick.

A reporter at High Times magazine got hold of the flier and printed it in 1991, bringing it to the attention of cannabis fans across state lines. The magazine continued to use the term in future publications, solidifying its place in popular vernacular.

Steve Bloom, the "High Times" reporter who originally received the flyer, later credited the Waldos for originating the term, saying in a 2013 blog , "...they wanted people all over the world to get together on one day each year and collectively smoke pot at the same time. They birthed the idea of a stoner holiday, which April 20 has become."

Stoner movies: Celebrate 4/20 with these TV shows and movies about weed

Where is weed legal?

Looking forward to partaking this 4/20? Make sure you know the laws in your area before you do.

The legalization of marijuana has been a long state-by-state process, and various levels of use from none to medical to recreational are allowed in jurisdictions across the U.S. At least 25 have fully legalized recreational use, and more are either in the process or have future voting on the books.

Wondering about the status in your state? Check our list of where recreational, medicinal marijuana is allowed in 2024.

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Meaning of do your homework in English

Do your homework.

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• break someone in
• bug-out bag
• build (someone/something) up
• get/have your ducks in a row idiom
• gird your self idiom
• roll up your sleeves idiom
• set something up
• set the scene/stage idiom

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of or relating to birds

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What the New Overtime Rule Means for Workers

One of the basic principles of the American workplace is that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. Simply put, every worker’s time has value. A cornerstone of that promise is the  Fair Labor Standards Act ’s (FLSA) requirement that when most workers work more than 40 hours in a week, they get paid more. The  Department of Labor ’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.

Overtime protections have been a critical part of the FLSA since 1938 and were established to protect workers from exploitation and to benefit workers, their families and our communities. Strong overtime protections help build America’s middle class and ensure that workers are not overworked and underpaid.

Some workers are specifically exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections, including bona fide executive, administrative or professional employees. This exemption, typically referred to as the “EAP” exemption, applies when: 

1. An employee is paid a salary,  

2. The salary is not less than a minimum salary threshold amount, and 

3. The employee primarily performs executive, administrative or professional duties.

While the department increased the minimum salary required for the EAP exemption from overtime pay every 5 to 9 years between 1938 and 1975, long periods between increases to the salary requirement after 1975 have caused an erosion of the real value of the salary threshold, lessening its effectiveness in helping to identify exempt EAP employees.

The department’s new overtime rule was developed based on almost 30 listening sessions across the country and the final rule was issued after reviewing over 33,000 written comments. We heard from a wide variety of members of the public who shared valuable insights to help us develop this Administration’s overtime rule, including from workers who told us: “I would love the opportunity to...be compensated for time worked beyond 40 hours, or alternately be given a raise,” and “I make around $40,000 a year and most week[s] work well over 40 hours (likely in the 45-50 range). This rule change would benefit me greatly and ensure that my time is paid for!” and “Please, I would love to be paid for the extra hours I work!”

The department’s final rule, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will increase the standard salary level that helps define and delimit which salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay protections under the FLSA. 

Starting July 1, most salaried workers who earn less than $844 per week will become eligible for overtime pay under the final rule. And on Jan. 1, 2025, most salaried workers who make less than $1,128 per week will become eligible for overtime pay. As these changes occur, job duties will continue to determine overtime exemption status for most salaried employees.

The rule will also increase the total annual compensation requirement for highly compensated employees (who are not entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA if certain requirements are met) from $107,432 per year to $132,964 per year on July 1, 2024, and then set it equal to $151,164 per year on Jan. 1, 2025.

Starting July 1, 2027, these earnings thresholds will be updated every three years so they keep pace with changes in worker salaries, ensuring that employers can adapt more easily because they’ll know when salary updates will happen and how they’ll be calculated.

The final rule will restore and extend the right to overtime pay to many salaried workers, including workers who historically were entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA because of their lower pay or the type of work they performed. 

We urge workers and employers to visit  our website to learn more about the final rule.

Jessica Looman is the administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Follow the Wage and Hour Division on Twitter at  @WHD_DOL  and  LinkedIn .  Editor's note: This blog was edited to correct a typo (changing "administrator" to "administrative.")

• Wage and Hour Division (WHD)
• Fair Labor Standards Act
• overtime rule

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