wullacken

• wulacken, wulaken, wullaken (variant spellings)
• wullachen, wulachen, wurachen, wuracken (rare)

From Westphalian Low German wulla(c)ken (attested 19th c.^[1] or earlier), also walla(c)ken and, without the velar element, wullen. All of these have the sense “to beat, brawl” besides “to toil”.^[2] Perhaps most plausibly a corruption of buerwiärken, from Middle Low German bûrwerken (“to perform obligatory services in public construction, groundworks etc.”), derived from bûr (“citizen, burgher, villager, farmer”) + werken (“to work”).^[3][4] Compare the byform bollwiärken (“to toil”), which was influenced by the noun at hand in English bulwark.^[5] The Westfälisches Wörterbuch also attests a form bullackern, which may reflect an intermediate step of the further development.

• IPA^(key): /ˈvʊlakən/

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

wullacken (weak, third-person singular present wullackt, past tense wullackte, past participle gewullackt, auxiliary haben) (parts of northwestern Germany, including Westphalia, Ruhr Area, colloquial, in some areas dated)

1. (intransitive) to toil, to work hard

   Synonyms: ackern, malochen, rackern, schuften; see also Thesaurus:arbeiten

   • 2022 January 12, Peter Köhler, “Die Wahrheit: Die graue Eminenz in Grau”, in Die Tageszeitung: taz‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Jobs hatte ja nichts gelernt. Er dagegen, Tim Cook, hatte Management und Ingenieur gebimst und bei IBM und Compaq gewullackt, während Papagei Jobs in der Luft herumfuchtelte und Utopien zusammenbraute.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)