What does “be at it” mean? What is an idiom?
How Do we evolve into good friends?
Mark Derr tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that he believes humans and wolves developed a close relationship after recognizing each other while hunting on the trail of big game. When they started traveling together, they stayed together and they have been going through things, since then. “The dog is a creation of wolves and humans — of two equal beings that came together at a certain point in history and have been together ever since.” What
I thought ” They’ve been at it ever since” means “they stayed at it ever since” does it do to the same, in the context of the narration?
If you read a dictionary, don’t miss your mark “proudly” or “hard at it “, but then don’t forget your mark, even if you do a lot of hard work.” At
the other hand, Google Ngram provides a graph of ” be at it ” usage, which can be traced back to circa 1840. When European monetary policy started to decline around 1940, and picked up again coming into 2000, which was soon expected to contribute to the decrease in usage.
What does “be at it” mean in the above sentence? Is “be at it” an idiom, or simple combination of words, i.e. I think they’ve been at it (the same place, status, role, level, relationship)?
P.S. Wisdom English Japanese Dictionary at hand records ‘be at it (again)’ as an idiom with definition ‘be involved aggressively in work’. What are some of the examples of quarrel, wicked deed, and “Yesterday, they were at it again” as an example of usage? I don’t think such a definition applies to the above context.
You were pretty much right isn’t it? Why do I have the “They’ve been doing it ever since” sentence but not on the informality of what
they have said it the whole time?
As Barrie says “to be at it” essentially means “to be doing it”. What’s a real idiom?
The slight differences are that it is a little bit less explicit and I feel it can also be a good expression, to say “to be trying/attempting (to do something)”.
