PUBLIC WORKS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Public works

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/pˈəblɪk wərks/ Listen

adjective

Public adj.

1.

Of or pertaining to the people; belonging to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community; opposed to private; as, the public treasury. "To the public good Private respects must yield." "He (Alexander Hamilton) touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprung upon its feet."

2.

Open to the knowledge or view of all; general; common; notorious; as, public report; public scandal. "Joseph,... not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily."

3.

Open to common or general use; as, a public road; a public house. "The public street."

public act or public statute (Law), an act or statute affecting matters of public concern. Of such statutes the courts take judicial notice.

Public credit. See under Credit.

Public funds. See Fund, 3.

Public house, an inn, or house of entertainment.

Public law.

(a)

See International law, under International.

(b)

A public act or statute.

Public nuisance. (Law) See under Nuisance.

Public orator. (Eng. Universities) See Orator, 3.

Public stores, military and naval stores, equipments, etc.

Public works, all fixed works built by civil engineers for public use, as railways, docks, canals, etc.; but strictly, military and civil engineering works constructed at the public cost.

See images of 'Public works'

Etymology of 'Public works'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Public works" Quotes from Famous Books

... (recurring to what is laid down in the first book, Ep. ii., and in the Epistle preceding this, v.159, etc.). What are the proper objects of Magnificence, and a proper field for the Expense of Great Men, v.177, etc., and finally, the Great and Public Works which become a ...

— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... the work was not as trivial as it may appear. With every proof notice published in these obscure proof sheets 160 acres of wasteland passed into privately owned farm units—and for this gigantic public works project there was not a cent appropriated either ...

— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... but to serve mine honest neighbors, who were likely to want work but for such exertion. From my observation, I am inclined greatly to doubt the salutary effect of the scheme generally adopted in Edinburgh and elsewhere for relieving the poor. At Edinburgh, they are employed on public works at so much a day—tenpence, I believe, or one shilling, with an advance to those who have families. This rate is fixed below that of ordinary wages, in order that no person may be employed but those who really cannot find work elsewhere. But it is attended with this bad effect, ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... universally believed that he exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public official, a municipal councillor, and a commissioner of roads, elected to the office through the votes of the ruffians who in turn expected to receive favours at his hands. Assessments and taxes were enormous; the public works were notoriously neglected, the accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding his tongue lest some worse ...

— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... on the north bank of the Tiber, was fortified as an outwork by Ancus Martius, and joined to the city by the bridge; he also dug a trench round the newly erected buildings, for their greater security, and called it the ditch of the Quirites. 9. The public works erected by the kings were of stupendous magnitude, but the private buildings were wretched, the streets narrow, and the houses mean. It was not until after the burning of the city by the Gauls that the city was laid out on a better ...

— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com