Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
down tools en · VERB
Meanings
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(UK, idiomatic, informal) To stop work, especially when taking industrial action.
But when railway workers downed tools almost a year later, on September 26 1919, Britain was in many ways still a country at war.
2020 January 2, Conrad Landin, “Strife and strikes in post-war Britain”, in Rail, page 51:In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay rise[.]
2023 January 22, Heather Stewart, “First industrial action at Amazon UK hopes to strike at firm’s union hostility”, in The Guardian:
Forms