Idiom
elbow grease
Meaning
Effort or hard work, especially physical work involving repeated motion of the forearm, such as scrubbing.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“This floor needs some elbow grease to get clean.”
“He put in hours of elbow grease to restore the old wooden table.”
“The antique dealer explained that no chemical could replace the patient elbow grease required to bring the brass fittings back to their original shine.”
Examples
simple
“This floor needs some elbow grease to get clean.”
contextual
“He put in hours of elbow grease to restore the old wooden table.”
complex
“The antique dealer explained that no chemical could replace the patient elbow grease required to bring the brass fittings back to their original shine.”
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated