Word.ws English Dictionary

on the tools

on the tools prepositional phrase: doing manual labour as a tradesperson, as opposed to being a foreman, business owner, etc., in the industry.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Doing manual labour as a tradesperson, as opposed to being a foreman, business owner, etc., in the industry.
    • The successful applicant will not be afraid to work with the men "on the tools", so that he knows them, can motivate them, and lead them by example.1980 August 23, The Canberra Times, Canberra, page 26, column 6

Questions about on the tools

What does on the tools mean?
On the tools means doing manual labour as a tradesperson, as opposed to being a foreman, business owner, etc., in the industry.
What part of speech is on the tools?
On the tools is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the tools in the dictionary

  1. on the telephone
  2. on the tenterhooks
  3. on the tenters
  4. on the tiles
  5. on the tip of one's tongue
  6. on the tools
  7. on the toss of a coin
  8. on the town
  9. on the trot
  10. on the turf
  11. on the turn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the tools (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.

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Cite this entry: “on the tools.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_tools. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.