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Many people try their best and put in a lot of effort at work or school. This week, we’re talking about expressions that mean to work hard. You can work like a dog, work your butt off, or put your nose to the grindstone. As usual, we give you lots of examples and teach you about how you can use these expressions.
| Maura: |
To work like a dog means to work very hard. |
| Harp: |
Yes. So if you use the expression to work like a dog, that means that someone is working very hard, putting in a lot of effort.
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| Maura: |
Whenever we have an idiom with an animal, I always wonder, “Why that animal?” |
| Harp: |
And Maura, why a dog?
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| Maura: |
Well, dogs do work hard. And I’m not talking about the dogs that most people have for pets, but dogs that work, like a seeing-eye dog that helps people who are visually impaired or the dogs that pull sleds, they work pretty hard too.
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| Harp: |
Yeah, and police dogs work really hard too. |
| Maura: |
Right. So a dog that works, works almost all the time. |
Expressions included from this episode in Learning Materials:
| Back-to-school |
To work like a dog |
| To pay off |
To work your butt off |
| Slang for buttocks |
To pull it off |
| That’d be fun |
Dropping the g in ing |
| To keep your nose to the grindstone |
Are you with me? |
| To be swamped |
To have something on the go |
Podcast/ Lipservice: Culips ESL Podcast, Photo: exfordy
oh wow, that’s interesting!! We usually say: to work like a horse. Guess why? because of all that plow stuff on fields. and also we say: to work like a cursed one/jinxed one (don’t know why)
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and we say work like a donkey.