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.
See also: mule, shoe

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.
See also: mule, stubborn

kick like a mule

 and kick like a steer
to 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.
See also: kick, like, mule

*stubborn as a mule

 and *obstinate as a mule
Cliché 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.
See also: mule, stubborn

work like a beaver

 and work like a mule; work like a horse; work like a slave
Fig. 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.
See also: beaver, like, work

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.
See also: mule, stubborn

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]
See also: mule, stubborn

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.
See also: beaver, like, work

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.
See also: acre, and, forty, mule

Common Names:

NameGenderPronouncedUsage
Calogerakah-lo-JE-rahItalian
Borisu-Medieval Slavic
Thulile-Southern African, Zulu
EfigÊNia-Portuguese (Brazilian)
Giacintajah-CHEEN-tahItalian
Tizianatee-TSYAH-nahItalian