beaver away
verbEtymology From the metaphorical image of a person working as industriously as a beaver building its dam.
1
Idiomatic To work hard at a task.
- She won't be going out much, as she's beavering away on her thesis.
- The most obvious impact of the strike was the “havoc” created at Glasgow and London’s Heathrow airports by striking air traffic controllers (who joined the strike in solidarity and are not themselves directly involved in the dispute). But quietly and without fuss, thousands of scientists normally beavering away in seclusion downed microscopes, test tubes, and oscilloscopes.1979 June 28, “Feedback: Trouble at th’ Laboratory”, in New Scientist, page 1103:
3 more examples
- I was thinking more of the tendency today for people to develop whole areas of mathematics on their own, in a rather abstract fashion. They just go on beavering away.1988, Michael Francis Atiyah, An Interview with Michael Atiyah: Collected Works: Volume 1: Early Papers, General Papers, page 299:
- On the other side there was a floor to ceiling partition, on which the mining share prices and dealing boards were fixed, separating the mining sales desk from the specialist mining research group who beavered away behind the partition.2004, Michael Coulson, An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector, published 2011, unnumbered page:
- "I'm still baffled at what you were able to accomplish. The rubberband effect would have lasted at least another... well, it could have lasted ten years without you beavering away in there. Maybe longer. I couldn't... we couldn't have waited that long. We needed you back, and here you are."2023 November 24, Placeholder McD, Liryn, HarryBlank, “SCP-7243”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 03 Oct 2024:
- Related terms
- eager beaver