at work

Prepositional phrase

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see at, work. At one's workplace.
   • He's not home at the moment: he's at work.
   • They've got a new photocopier at work.
2. Working, in the process of doing work.
   • Don't interrupt me while I'm at work on my housing project.
   • In the United States, where the railways are 90 per cent. dieselised today, diesel-electric power is the unvarying rule for independent locomotive units, and the only motive power exceptions are the highly successful 600-h.p. diesel-hydraulic railcars of the Budd "RDC" type, of which between 300...1958 April, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 268
3. (figuratively) At play, in action.
   • These three [August Bebel, Helen Stoecker, and Magnus Hirschfeld] can be taken to typify some of the currents at work before the Nazis came to power in 1933.1986 February 15, Denis M. Sweet, “A Sobering History from Weimar to the Ovens”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 39, page B3

   Synonyms:

   working