Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
⚖️ To balance effort and fun 🎉 A lively lifestyle
to work hard and play hard

to work hard and play hard

1 4.3
To put a lot of effort into work and enjoy free time actively
  • idiom
  • Informal
: trabajar duro y disfrutar
  • We worked hard and played hard.

Examples

  • Successful athletes often emphasize the need to work hard and play hard throughout their careers.

  • I think the young players learned how you have to work hard and play hard to win.

    Blog text (7)

  • To achieve a good work-life balance, many people believe it's important to work hard and play hard.

  • In her new job, she decided to work hard and play hard to make the most of her time both in and out of the office.

Antonyms

to slack off
  • Informal
20 3.9

To become less strong or busy

How Energetic

to overwork
4 4.1
to work hard and play hard
  • Informal
1 4.3
to take it easy
  • Informal
431 2.5

Surface Forms

work hard and play hard infinitive
worked hard and played hard past
worked hard and played hard past participle
working hard and playing hard present participle
works hard and plays hard third person singular

Morphology

work + hard + and + play + hard

The phrase is directly compositional: 'work hard' means to work with great effort and 'play hard' means to play/relax intensely, joined by 'and' to indicate both behaviors. This coordinated, literal meaning follows common cross-linguistic patterns and would be immediately inferable by a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.

Etymology

Work hard and play hard paints a simple picture: someone gives all their energy to work and then gives all their energy to play. That's why it means 'to put a lot of effort into one's work and also actively enjoy one's leisure time'.