jobsworth.
A person who upholds trivial rules unnecessarily and obstructively in order to exercise their (typically minor) authority.
Meaning & usage
A person who upholds trivial rules unnecessarily and obstructively in order to exercise their (typically minor) authority.
The usual council jobsworths came down to tell them to stop playing football.
Where this word comes from
A compound of job + -s- + worth, derived from the phrase “It’s more than me job’s worth” or “... my job’s worth” as used in denial of a request by a functionary, chiefly popularized by Jeremy Taylor's 1973 song “Jobsworth” and the 1973–1994 BBC television series That’s Life! which focused on consumer affairs and gave a “Jobsworth of the Week” award to “a startling tale of going by the book”.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.