worker

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Science

n. an insect, like an ant or a bee, that does the work for its colony but does not have babies.

n. a member of a non-reproductive caste in social insects that performs tasks such as foraging and nest maintenance.

“The worker bees spend their days collecting nectar from nearby flowers.”

“In many ant species, the worker caste is responsible for defending the colony and tending to the larvae produced by the queen.”

C1 · Advanced Countable noun Computing Technical

n. a small part of a computer program that does a specific task in the background.

n. a thread or process that performs a specific task independently, often to keep the main interface responsive.

“The web browser uses a background worker to load the images while you read.”

“By offloading the data processing to a service worker, the application remains interactive even during heavy computational cycles.”