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elbow grease

 
Dictionary: elbow grease

n. Informal
Strenuous physical labor and effort.


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Thesaurus: elbow grease
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noun

    The use of energy to do something: effort, endeavor, exertion, pain (used in plural), strain1, striving, struggle, trouble, while. See work/play.

Idioms: elbow grease
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Strenuous physical effort, as in You'll have to use some elbow grease to get the house painted in time. This term alludes to vigorous use of one's arm in cleaning, polishing, or the like. It soon was extended to any kind of hard work, and Anthony Trollope used it still more figuratively (Thackeray, 1874): "Forethought is the elbow-grease which a novelist ... requires." [First half of 1600s]


WordNet: elbow grease
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: use of physical or mental energy; hard work
  Synonyms: effort, exertion, travail, sweat


Wikipedia: Elbow grease
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Elbow grease is a metaphor for working hard at manual labour, as in "You need to use some elbow grease." It is a humorous reflection of the fact that some tasks can only be achieved by hard effort and human energy, contrasting with the idea that there should be some special oil, tool or chemical product to make the job easier.

It has also been used as a practical joke by a master tradesperson on apprentices, e.g. "Go fetch some elbow grease from him." Each tradesperson will say someone else has the elbow grease and send the unwitting apprentice on to another master tradesperson. The snipe hunt will continue until the apprentice gives up, catches on or runs out of people/places to search.

Appearances in popular media

  • The prank was used in the popular web series Red vs. Blue where two of the Red soldiers tell their new recruit to go fetch "Elbow grease and headlight fluid" from the store. Their prank backfires when the recruit instead asks for the enemy's flag from the enemy's recruit, mistaking the other base for the store.



 
 
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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Idioms. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Elbow grease" Read more

 

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