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
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Initially, many of these factories functioned as little more than exploitative sweatshops in which desperate young women sewed clothes for as little as five cents an hour (roughly $1 in 2025 dollars). Made By History, Time, 21 Apr. 2025 Ramchandani’s directorial debut City of Dreams tells the story of a young boy from Mexico trafficked across the border and sold to a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles. Matt Grobar, Deadline, 8 Aug. 2024 The brand-university licensing relationship was an important lever to pull because of the role student activism plays in battling sweatshops, which is why WRC didn’t contact Outerstuff and non-collegiate buyers during the two factories’ remediation process. Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal, 3 Sep. 2019 During the 1990s and 2000s, for example, protests on college campuses over Nike’s use of sweatshop labor forced the company to raise the minimum age for hiring new workers at shoe factories to 18 and allow human rights groups to inspect factory conditions in Asia. Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN, 28 Feb. 2025 See All Example Sentences for sweatshop

Word History

First Known Use

1884, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of sweatshop was in 1884

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Cite this Entry

“Sweatshop.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweatshop. Accessed 1 May. 2025.

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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