plug away

phrasal verb

plugged away; plugging away; plugs away

informal

: to continue doing something even though it is difficult or boring

—often + at

She kept plugging away at her homework.

Examples of plug away in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

To shift on defense may be right or wrong, but plugging away at a suit without thinking is lazy. —Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 13 Feb. 2024

There have been some weird issues here and there, but Intel has kept plugging away at its buggy drivers, slowly improving Arc's performance across a range of games. —Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 1 Feb. 2023

Teams of researchers plugging away in laboratories around the world have recently discovered that some key features of timekeeping are tied to cellular metabolism — which means that the organelle called the mitochondrion is both a generator and a clock. —Quanta Magazine, 19 Dec. 2023

CIOs plugged away at digital transformations for years, notching quick wins with mobile apps and other digital services. —Clint Boulton, Forbes, 30 Nov. 2023

Beginning on Monday, Slack employees will be expected to set aside their regular work duties and to instead plug away at various modules on Salesforce’s Trailhead online learning platform, Fortune has learned. —Bykylie Robison, Fortune, 5 Oct. 2023

Manufacturers kept plugging away at roughly the same recipe for decades until Yamaha released its YZ400F four-stroke dirt bike, which won its first race (1997 Las Vegas Supercross) with relative ease. —Matt Crisara, Popular Mechanics, 31 May 2023

Those performances, more than 1,800 miles apart, on the last Saturday night of March showcased two extremes: A rock star who's traveled the world playing originals and a weekend warrior plugging away with a cover band in local bars and clubs. —IndyStar, 28 Apr. 2023

During downtime from the road, the younger Zander quietly plugged away at songs for his debut album The Distance, co-produced by Kenny Siegal, which arrives on April 21. —Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 18 Apr. 2023