Emily felt a moment of pure terror, the spectre of the workhouse on Mount Pleasant Hill rose before her eyes, the poor house where the homeless lived a life of sheer drudgery and hardship.

"The editors here think that this vast amount of energy, effort and in some cases sheer drudgery deserves some attention."

Instead of emphasizing epic cowboy grandeur or the deserved conquests of an advancing civilization, many portray the West as a place full of terrible evil or sheer drudgery.

Now it could be that the making of this sequel was sheer drudgery for all concerned.

For the past year he had been making a living in London as a drama critic at $10 a week, but the sheer drudgery was causing headaches and neuralgia.

(After the leave was over, he said, the rest was "sheer drudgery.")

"It sure reduces sheer drudgery."

He enjoyed working with his hands, though he'd pretended that manual arts was sheer drudgery.

It was sheer drudgery and he despised it.

The sheer drudgery of transposing random letters was enough to drive a man mad, and there had to be an easier way.