work or deed: what someone does, along with what that doing earns or produces
At its heart this word names what someone does: a deed, an act, a piece of work. It is a favorite of Hebrew poetry, and above all it names the great acts of God, the doings that the psalms call people to watch for, remember, and sing about.
Because a word for doing naturally reaches toward the fruit of doing, it stretches in two more directions. It can mean the pay a worker has earned, so that a hired laborer waiting for his "work" is waiting for his wages. And it can mean the thing a worker makes, so that a lump of clay is imagined talking back to the potter about "your work."
The same word covers both a person's conduct, which God repays according to what they have actually done, and God's own conduct, whose work is called perfect and worth praising. English cannot hold all of that in one word, so translators reach for work, deed, act, doings, wages, or handiwork depending on which side of the word is in view.