"plough on" meaning in English

See plough on in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: ploughs on [present, singular, third-person], ploughing on [participle, present], ploughed on [participle, past], ploughed on [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} plough on (third-person singular simple present ploughs on, present participle ploughing on, simple past and past participle ploughed on)
  1. To continue with a task despite it being menial, difficult, or boring
    Sense id: en-plough_on-en-verb-NhaK3Qyk Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English phrasal verbs with particle (on)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for plough on meaning in English (1.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "ploughs on",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughing on",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughed on",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughed on",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "plough on (third-person singular simple present ploughs on, present participle ploughing on, simple past and past participle ploughed on)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (on)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We could stop for a coffee, or plough on to the hotel.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 January 10, Jo Kaye, “Greater support for the railway family”, in Railway Magazine, number 1000, page 50",
          "text": "Many feel they cannot take time off as this would only serve to make things financially worse, and so they plough on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To continue with a task despite it being menial, difficult, or boring"
      ],
      "id": "en-plough_on-en-verb-NhaK3Qyk",
      "links": [
        [
          "continue",
          "continue"
        ],
        [
          "menial",
          "menial"
        ],
        [
          "difficult",
          "difficult"
        ],
        [
          "boring",
          "boring"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "plough on"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "ploughs on",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughing on",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughed on",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "ploughed on",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "plough on (third-person singular simple present ploughs on, present participle ploughing on, simple past and past participle ploughed on)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (on)",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We could stop for a coffee, or plough on to the hotel.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 January 10, Jo Kaye, “Greater support for the railway family”, in Railway Magazine, number 1000, page 50",
          "text": "Many feel they cannot take time off as this would only serve to make things financially worse, and so they plough on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To continue with a task despite it being menial, difficult, or boring"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "continue",
          "continue"
        ],
        [
          "menial",
          "menial"
        ],
        [
          "difficult",
          "difficult"
        ],
        [
          "boring",
          "boring"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "plough on"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (384852d and db5a844). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.