elbow grease

1. 1.

   use of physical or mental energy; hard work

   “he got an A for effort”

   “they managed only with great exertion”

   Synonymseffortexertiontravailsweat

   Broaderlabor

   Narrowerstruggletroubleleast effortstrainexercisepullapplicationoverkillsupererogationoverexertion

Questions about elbow grease

What does elbow grease mean?

elbow grease means "use of physical or mental energy; hard work".

What is another word for elbow grease?

Close synonyms include effort, exertion, travail, sweat. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is elbow grease a common word?

elbow grease is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.