expressões com a palavra sweat

Just like Portuguese, we associate sweat with effort and work. Not that you have to necessarily sweat to show people you're working. Sometimes your work doesn't involve any kind of physical effort, but as a way to show you've been working a lot, you say something related to sweat.

For example, imagine you're a college student struggling to turn in your final papers. Everybody knows how difficult those are and when somebody asks you how they're progressing, here's what you say: those papers really have me sweating. I don't think I need to go into details about that one because it is pretty simple to understand. Let's go to our second expression then.

Still talking about putting a lot of effort into something, imagine you're still in that previous situation I suggested. Instead of saying what you said, here's another option: I'm working up a sweat to make sure my final papers are ready on time. Again, to work up a sweat means to work a lot on something, give your best effort to get it done.

I've shown you different ways to use the word sweat meaning effort and word, but now I'd like to provide you with a way to use the word sweat meaning a different thing: trouble. So, pretend you have someone in your class that's always trying to defeat you by spreading gossip about you. You don't really care for what she's doing because you know everybody knows you well enough to the point of knowing all the gossip is a bunch of lies. So here's what you say to your friend when he asks you what you're going to do about it: I can handle it. It won't cause me any sweat. If you want to understand that, just replace the word sweat for trouble and there you have it. Talk to you next time!