spadework
dirty work
dirty job
menial task

Still, more spadework is needed before any companies can be invited back.

Meanwhile the soldiers were getting some help with the spadework.

Sometimes, it seems, grass roots need a little spadework from the press.

As things are, he has not only to invent his method, but also do most of the spadework for himself.

But all this careful political spadework will be confined to Massachusetts.

By 1981 much of the intellectual spadework for the Reagan presidency had been done.

But at night, when Patriot spadework is over, figure the sacred rights of hospitality!

I continued my research, did some spadework on the straw doll and the evil eye.

Spadework left her puffing and red in the face.

With all the spadework being done on the budget negotiations, there was still room for Presidential politics to take root.

"I think it is not a good thing, to take out the bones" for reburial, he said during a break in his spadework.

Getting her people involved in dull, slogging, but essential spadework might be no bad thing at all.

Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not.

He that has four limbs, and a French heart, can do spadework; and will!

But how come he couldn't see any marks of the sort he associated with spadework?

It's partly better spadework by the local Democrats, he said, and partly economics.

He felt certain he had scored his point, and was somewhat proud of the fancy spadework.

- that Verin's spadework would make them back away from this.

Spadework revealed fancy blue tile, underwater light fixtures and smooth white walls.

While Edward works on that, the rest of us need to concentrate on the spadework to prepare public opinion.

"Lon," Rhyme asked, "who's doing the spadework on the death this morning?"

He may also realize that any spadework he does now could help him if he runs for the presidency again in 2008.

Arabization was the spadework that prepared the ground for a militant Islamic movement.

The cost of having the return prepared can often be reduced sharply if clients do some preliminary spadework, like getting their records organized in advance.

Not after all my careful spadework.