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mule
shoe (one's) mule
To steal or misappropriate funds. The phrase refers to blacksmiths who did not shoe one's animal even after accepting payment. I entrusted him with a lot of money, so I'm going to be livid if I find out that he's trying to shoe my mule.
be (as) stubborn as a mule
To be very devoted to a particular opinion or course of action, especially when faced with opposition. My toddler is as stubborn as a mule and has a tantrum every night at bedtime because he doesn't want to stop playing. You'll never get Rich to change his opinion—he's stubborn as a mule.
kick like a mule
and kick like a steerto kick very hard. They say that ostriches will kick like a mule if you bother them. Stay away from the back end of Tom's horse. It will kick like a steer when a stranger comes up.
*stubborn as a mule
and *obstinate as a muleCliché very stubborn. (*Also: as ~.) I tried to convince Jake to go to the doctor, but he's as stubborn as a mule. For four years, Henry pestered his parents to let him learn the trumpet. They tried to talk him into some other, quieter instrument, but he was stubborn as a mule, and now he has a trumpet.
work like a beaver
and work like a mule; work like a horse; work like a slaveFig. to work very hard. She has an important deadline coming up, so she's been working like a beaver. You need a vacation. You work like a slave in that kitchen. I'm too old to work like a horse. I'd prefer to relax more.
be as stubborn as a mule
to be very determined not to change your decision or opinion about something, even when it is wrong You won't get him to change his mind - he's as stubborn as a mule.
stubborn as a mule
Extremely obstinate, as in He's stubborn as a mule about wearing a suit and tie. This simile evokes the proverbial stubbornness of mules, whose use as draft animals was once so common that the reputation for obstinacy can hardly be as warranted as the term indicates. [Early 1800s]
work like a beaver
Also,
work like a dog or horse or Trojan . Work very energetically and hard, as in
She worked like a beaver to clean out all the closets, or
I've been working like a dog weeding the garden, or
He's very strong and works like a horse. The first of these similes is the oldest, first recorded in 1741; the variants date from the second half of the 1800s. Also see
work one's fingers to the bone.
mule
n. someone who delivers or smuggles drugs for a drug dealer. (Drugs.) The jerks use a twelve-year-old kid for a mule!
Forty acres and a mule
A a government handout; a broken promise. As Union general William T. Sherman marched through Georgia and other parts of the confederacy during the Civil War, he promised freed slaves the gift of forty acres of South Carolina and Georgia farmland and an army mule with which to work the soil. Following the war, however, President Johnson rescinded Sherman's order, and the appropriated land was restored to its owners. While most citizens adopted the phrase as a metaphor for either any form of government handout (or a trifling salary or bonus from their employer), African-Americans who remembered the expression's history used it as a rueful reminder of a offer that was reneged upon.