Physical and colloquial meanings of the term “work”

Abstract

Physicists are often apologetic about the difference between the physical and colloquial meanings of the term “work,” particularly in situations in which a lot of effort is involved but nothing is moved so no work is done in the physical sense. I argue that there is no need to be apologetic. Many words in mechanics have different physical and colloquial meanings. In the sense that work applies to output rather than input, its physical meaning is closer to the colloquial meaning than many other terms in mechanics. A review of the history shows that force×distance was used to refer to the output of engines since the early eighteenth century. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, several terms were used to denote force×distance, but none became widespread and work quickly became the preferred term after it was suggested by G. Coriolis in 1829.