# by the sweat of your brow

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/by-the-sweat-of-your-brow
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

Through hard physical labour and personal effort.

## Examples

- He built the whole house by the sweat of his brow.
- Every acre of that farm was cleared by the sweat of her brow, long before machines did the work.
- They inherited nothing and borrowed less; the business exists today only by the sweat of their brow and a stubborn refusal to quit.

## Origin

The phrase comes from God's words to Adam after the Fall, in Genesis 3:19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." Cast out of Eden, humanity is told that food will no longer come freely — it must be worked for. The line marks a turn in the story from ease to toil, and it fixed an idea deep in Western thinking: that labour is the price of survival, and that bread is earned rather than given. The modern form softened "face" to "brow" and dropped the theology, but the meaning held. To do something by the sweat of your brow is to achieve it through your own hard physical work, with no shortcuts and no one else doing it for you.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.