busy as a beaver
also, work like a beaver
Meaning
- work very hard and actively.
- to be intensely engaged in methodical and diligent work.
- a simile derived from the fact that beavers spend a significant amount of time felling trees and building their dams.
- the phrase can be contrasted with the related idiom, "busy as a bee," which implies quick or rapid work. However, in practice, both have come to simply mean actively working.
Example Sentences
- I often find my husband in the garage, busy as a beaver, working on some new project.
- I have been busy as a beaver, working to complete my thesis prior to graduation.
- Although they are clearly enjoying themselves, the children are as busy as beavers, constructing their pretend fort.
- Ahead of Christmas, she worked like a beaver to clean out all the closets.
- My dad has to work like a beaver to buy a new house.
Origin
The 1850 pamphlet, The Child's Companion and Juvenile Instructor (Religious Tract Society, 1850, p. 86) uses the phrase to describe the activities of an impoverished child:
"when the tide is out, you may see him on the river's brink [...], busy as a beaver, searching the mud..."
In an 1823 column published in the New York Observer, titled, " Be Ye Not as the Horse," Henry Force noted that this idiom, along with a litany of others, exemplified the long-standing use of animal similes to describe human behavior. Since Force takes it as a well-known and often-used turn of phrase, this suggests that it was widely used and well-established at the time, probably having originated in the 18th Century.
