アルバイト

German Arbeit, spelled with capital A because it is a German noun, is the source form for アルバイト. Duden gives Arbeit as work and links older German forms to effort and hardship. The noun is feminine, die Arbeit, and its plural Arbeiten can mean tasks or papers. Japanese dictionaries such as デジタル大辞泉 gloss the source as labor, work, and academic work, not a limited part-time position. The borrowing is usually placed in Meiji or Taisho student slang, the period from 1868 to 1926 when German academic vocabulary had status in schools. Old higher-school students used アルバイト for study, research output, and paid side work such as tutoring. The related German verb is arbeiten. After 1945, the paid-work sense spread outside campuses, and the shortened バイト became common beside パート, パートタイム, and later フリーター. In present Japanese, アルバイト usually means casual or part-time paid work, especially by students or people outside full-time regular employment. German Arbeit still means work in a wide sense, so the Japanese word is narrower than its source. A shop sign such as アルバイト募集 means part-time staff wanted, not work wanted in general.