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.
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Expressions included in the 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
Sample transcript
| 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. |
| Maura: | Whenever we have an idiom with an animal, I always wonder, “Why that animal?” |
| Harp: | And Maura, why a dog? |
| 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. |
| Harp: | Yeah, and police dogs work really hard too. |
| Maura: | Right. So a dog that works, works almost all the time. |
Audio/Learning Materials: Culips