to skate your lane
- idiom
- Informal
:
ocúpate de tus asuntos
- My supervisor reminded me to skate my lane and not get involved in other departments' issues.
Examples
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She tries hard to skate her lane and avoid office drama.
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It's important to skate your lane if you want the team to function smoothly.
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Just skate your lane!
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He always skates his lane at work.
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It's essential to skate your lane to maintain your productivity and keep the peace at work.
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In a busy office, it's best to skate your lane and concentrate on your own tasks.
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To ensure a good workflow, everyone should skate their lane and avoid stepping into others' responsibilities.
Synonyms
51
3.7
Stay out of other people's private matters and focus on your own
35
5.8
Tell someone not to ask about or get involved in other people's lives
15
4.2
Act on your own without following what other people want
2
7.5
To be independent and take care of yourself without help
1
8.6
Give full attention to your own work and skills, not other people's tasks
Only work in the area you know well
Antonyms
How Interfering
- Informal
21
4.4
769
3.1
- Informal
- Informal
35
5.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
skate + your + lane
The components 'your lane' transparently point to a personal domain or responsibility and 'skate' (to glide/move) hints at staying/moving within that area, so learners can get a partial sense of ‘keep to your own tasks.’ However, this is informal/slang and uses a metaphorical directive (akin to 'stay in your lane') whose pragmatic force and idiomaticity are not fully predictable from the parts, so a B1 learner would not reliably infer the exact meaning without exposure.
Etymology
Skate your lane comes from the image of someone on skates staying in their own lane so they do not hit other people. So, it means 'to focus on your own tasks and not get involved in other people's work'.