go through the motions

1. 1.

   pretend to do something by acting as if one was really doing it

   “She isn't really working--she's just going through the motions”

   Broadermake

Questions about go through the motions

What does go through the motions mean?

go through the motions means "pretend to do something by acting as if one was really doing it".

Is go through the motions a common word?

go through the motions 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.