odd job

Definitions

1. 1

   A spell of temporary employment.

   • They believe that when a partnership works as well as theirs has, you shouldn't analyze it too much. Success came in the midforties when Paramount hired them for the musical equivalent of odd jobs.
   • On the other hand, if the decedent wanted to be a veterinarian but had never worked full time, worked odd jobs, had an English degree, and had worked as a receptionist at the veterinarian's office, it might be different.
   • Most of the usual things that average people sought seem to come his way anyway, for example, money when he needed it, where he'd take an odd job until he earned enough to get by for a while and then he'd hit the road again.
2. 2

   A task of an incidental, unspecialized nature.

   • I like doing odd jobs around the house.
   • He moved all over the States, without a cent, picking up any odd job he could get.
   • For the next two weeks I bided my time, sleeping at night on an army-issue metal cot in a small, bare room separate from the other men; working during the day at whatever odd job the duty officer saw fit to hand out.
3. 3

   Alternative form of odd-job.

   • "I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that a gentleman like yourself wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm grey at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so—I don't say it is, but even if it wos."
   • The Kettles recommended Peter Moses, a little, old, apple-cheeked man who "odd jobbed" and claimed to be the most patriotic man in the "Yewnited States of America.

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