Work Cut Out For You…

Dear N___:

You wrote:

>Are these sentences correct:
>A-You would have your work cut out for you to interview him.
>B-To interview him, you would have your work cut out for you.

>If they are, what do they mean?

Yes, they are correct. They both mean the same thing as the adverbial infinitive phrase can come before or after the main clause.

“To have your work cut out for you” (or “his work for him,” etc.) is an idiom which means that you will have to prepare for some hard work. In this case, “it will take hard work for you to interview him.”

The idiom comes from the image of a kit of some kind where the pieces are normally precut (say, a toy airplane). It is clearly more work if you have to cut the pieces out and measure them correctly yourself. The expression is normally used with the word “work,” but I have heard it with the word “task” or “job.”

I hope this helps.

3 thoughts on “Work Cut Out For You…”

  1. Thanks for breaking this down for the rest of us. We need more of this! Thanks and 5+.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.