to carry the mail
- idiom
- US
:
cumplir con las responsabilidades
- Even under pressure, she knows how to carry the mail and keep the team moving forward.
Examples
-
You can always count on him to carry the mail when a big project comes his way.
-
If we want this event to succeed, we need someone who can really carry the mail.
-
She carries the mail!
-
Can you carry the mail for me today?
-
When deadlines are tight, you can trust her to carry the mail and deliver quality work.
-
In the office, he always knows how to carry the mail effectively during busy times.
-
To ensure everything runs smoothly, we need someone who can carry the mail in stressful situations.
Synonyms
1
3.2
Act responsibly because your role or job needs it
How Reliable
58
3.7
- Informal
4
3.9
- US
94
2.4
86
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a motivated, metaphorical extension of the literal senses of 'carry' (bear/transport) and 'mail' (postal items): learners can infer a sense of 'doing the delivering/working' but the specific evaluative sense 'reliably fulfill one's duties' is a figurative shift. Because the mapping from transporting mail to competent, dependable performance is metaphorical rather than strictly compositional, a B1 learner who knows the words may suspect a related meaning but would not reliably infer the exact idiomatic sense without exposure.
Etymology
Carry the mail comes from postal workers who had to carry heavy bags of mail by hand over long distances and still deliver on time. Because they did this steady, essential work, the phrase came to mean 'to do important work reliably'.