elbow grease
elbow grease noun: effort or hard work, especially physical work involving repeated motion of the forearm, such as scrubbing.
Noun
elbow grease (uncountable)
- Effort or hard work, especially physical work involving repeated motion of the forearm, such as scrubbing.
- It is astonishing what miserable saws are sometimes used by mechanics, or those claiming to be such. The only way they can be coaxed or driven through the wood is by having an enormous set, a liberal use of oil, and another lubricator called elbow-grease.1864, Henry Wells Holly, chapter 3, in The Art of Saw-Filing, page 12
- When we were young we used to be told, in our house at home, that "elbow-grease" was the one essential necessary to getting a tough piece of work well done. If a mahogany table was to be made to shine, it was elbow-grease that the operation needed.1879, Anthony Trollope, chapter 5, in William Makepeace Thackeray
- Synonyms:
- elbow juice
elbow grease meaning in Tamil and Bengali
elbow grease in Tamil
- கடின உழைப்பு
elbow grease in Bengali
- প্রচেষ্টা, কঠোর পরিশ্রম
Examples of elbow grease in a sentence
- If the F.R. ever expands its administration to include a statistician, his figure for net foot-pounds of elbow grease per trailing ton-mile are going to look quite impressive.1958 July, R. K. Kirkland, “Into the Mountains on the Festiniog Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 450:
- Some soapy water and a little elbow grease and we'll have the Glam Van clean in no time.2019, Sunny, “Violet's Adventure”, in Sunny Day:
Synonyms of elbow grease
Forms of elbow grease
| alternative form | elbow-grease |
|---|
Questions about elbow grease
- What does elbow grease mean?
- Elbow grease means effort or hard work, especially physical work involving repeated motion of the forearm, such as scrubbing.
- What is elbow grease in Tamil?
- Elbow grease in Tamil is கடின உழைப்பு. See Elbow grease meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use elbow grease in a sentence?
- If the F.R. ever expands its administration to include a statistician, his figure for net foot-pounds of elbow grease per trailing ton-mile are going to look quite impressive.
- What part of speech is elbow grease?
- Elbow grease is a noun.
Words near elbow grease in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: elbow grease (page history and authors); elbow grease (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); elbow grease (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-elbow grease.ogg.
Cite this entry: “elbow grease.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elbow_grease. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.