journalier

Journalier is a French term with two principal senses. As a noun, it denotes a day laborer—someone hired to work for a single day, typically in farming, construction, or other casual, seasonal labor, and paid at the end of the day. In historical contexts, journaliers were common before widespread industrialization, and records often describe wage practices, mobility, and precarious employment. The feminine form is journalière, and the plural is journaliers or journalières when referring to women.

As an adjective, journalier means daily or quotidian, used in expressions such as tâches journalières (daily tasks) or revenu journalier (daily income). In modern French, quotidien is more common for the everyday sense of “daily,” while journalier remains frequent in technical, historical, or literary contexts and in compound terms describing day-to-day activity.

Etymology and background: journalier derives from journal, which comes from Old French journal and ultimately from Latin diurnalis, meaning of the day. The word reflects its historical association with day-to-day labor and day-to-day life.

Usage notes: Today the term is mainly encountered in historical, agrarian, or literary contexts. In contemporary everyday language, journalists and the general public more often use daily or quotidien for non-labor contexts and employ expressions like emploi journalier or travailleur journalier when referring to day-labor arrangements.

Example sentences: Il a engagé des journaliers pour la récolte. Ils étaient rémunérés à la journée. Les tâches journalières incluent l’arrosage et le désherbage.