Working like a dog - Culips English Podcast

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.
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.

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

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