ON DUTY Definition & Meaning

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on duty

At one's post, at work, as in The new nurse was on duty that evening, or The watchman was fired because he was drunk on duty. [Mid-1600s] The antonym, off duty, means “not engaged in one's work,” as in Captain Smith was much more amiable when he was off duty. [Mid-1800s]

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I have a close friend, a lieutenant in the Airforce, who was on duty in one of the radar stations struck by Israel.

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Ms Logan was the second female firefighter to die on duty in peacetime, after Fleur Lombard, 21, died in Bristol in 1996.

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“I’ve been on duty 12 hours,” a police officer told me late Tuesday night after Mayor Karen Bass invoked an 8 p.m. curfew.

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Errors by two nurses on duty on Hepworth Ward slowed the arrival of an on-call doctor and paramedics.

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The condition of a police officer left critically injured in a crash while on duty has improved in hospital, a police force has confirmed.

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