to milk
- verb
- /mɪlk/
- Informal
- Many members of Congress were evidently happy to milk the public.
- milk the system
- milk it
- milk for cash
And basically we milk money by not paying taxes.
- And basically we milk money by not paying taxes.
- My life has been being milked like a cow.
Examples
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Government bureaucracies were slowly destroyed by corrupt management and milked for resources for patronage.
Academic text (2003) -
I think we milked it a little there at the end, though.
-
So yeah, why not milk that one next?
-
And basically we milk money by not paying taxes.
-
It seems from the outside that you milk every possible thing.
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Come on, stop milking it.
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I wanna milk the last ounce of baseball you got in you.
-
Surely there were weeks of episodes to be milked from it—not to mention the question of paternity.
Fiction book (1991) -
Are these media organizations trying to milk the anniversary for ratings and circulation?
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By hosting visitors, farmers are able to milk more dollars out of their land.
Idioms
To waste time being upset about something that already happened and cannot be changed
Compounds
A tall prickly plant with purple flowers and white spots on leaves used in herbal medicine to help the liver
A kind of milk with the fat broken into tiny pieces so cream does not rise
- Specialized
A small plant with purple flowers that grows every year on high mountain slopes
- US
A harmless tan and brown snake often with red stripes and an arrow spot on its head
- Specialized
A milky liquid used to make things less acidic, for example in tanning and water treatment
- Specialized
An illness people get from drinking milk from cows that ate a poisonous plant
- Specialized
A condition when the body cannot digest milk because it cannot break down milk sugar
- US
A harmless North American snake with red, black, and white bands that looks like a coral snake
A thin yellow liquid left after milk is curdled and the solids are removed to make cheese
- Archaic
Sick after eating meat or drinking milk from animals that eat poisonous plants
How Exploitative
Surface Forms
Etymology
Milk in the sense of 'exploit' comes from the farm picture of drawing milk again and again from an animal; people started using milk to mean taking as much as possible from a thing or situation. That's why to 'milk' something is to use it for every advantage, often for personal gain.