beavering

A Beaver is credited with a haphazard way of gnawing round and round a tree till somehow it tumbles, and when a chopper deviates in the least from the correct form, the exact right cut in the exact right place, he is said to be "beavering"; therefore, while "working like a Beaver" is high praise, "beavering" a tree is a term of unmeasured reproach, and

Two Little Savages Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned Ernest Thompson Seton 1903

It shows an open office where workers wearing the same shirt and haircut are beavering away.

Once a Global Also-Ran, Hyundai Zooms Forward Mike Ramsey 2011

Windows 7 may well be getting most of the attention around here, but Microsoft is still beavering away on trying to turn Vista into a product that works with the imminent release of Service Pack 2.

Vista Service Pack 2 Due Within Weeks | Lifehacker Australia 2009

Instead the Tories plan to ring-fence NHS spending, thus keeping hordes of adminstrators who are otherwise otiose beavering away at nothing very much.

Up Close & Personal With The NHS 2009

One thing is for certain the Swamp and similar places will still be there and all the crap we have to deal with will still be beavering away theiving, fighting, frauding and generally putting one over on the decent folk who have to pay for it. on April 6, 2010 at 2: 19 pm PC Stavros

Locally Elected Police Chiefs, Yeah? « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2010

It shows an open office where workers wearing the same shirt and haircut are beavering away.

Once a Global Also-Ran, Hyundai Zooms Forward Mike Ramsey 2011

Instead the Tories plan to ring-fence NHS spending, thus keeping hordes of adminstrators who are otherwise otiose beavering away at nothing very much.

Archive 2009-06-14 2009

The Executive Summary was invented by the first researcher (circa, 2923 bc) who, after beavering away through months of extensive and thorough investigation of a problem and producing a 200 page tome documenting the results (details, as well as options/recommendations), realized that no one who had originally commissioned said document ever read it.

Global Competitiveness?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

To the hardy band of right-leaning scholars beavering away in the American academy, he would have said: Be brave, but until you have secured tenure, be no more brave than conscience demands.

Buckley, If Not God, Returns to Yale Neal B. Freeman 2011

Indeed, along this new road -- a road broader than any market capitalism has previously traveled -- the world's biggest challenges represent the biggest business opportunities -- and not only for large corporations but also for all those entrepreneurs beavering away in garages around the world.

Nancy F. Koehn: A New Damascus 2010