Way With Words: Nose to Grindstone

My dad always said to ‘keep your nose to the grindstone’ when he wanted me to do my homework.

I understood his meaning, that I should work hard until I finished, but I didn’t know what the proverbial ‘grindstone’ was, nor why I should keep my nose on it.

Phrases.uk.org suggests that it came from the habit of “millers who checked that the stones used for grinding cereal weren't overheating by putting their nose to the stone in order to smell any burning.”

Alternatively, the site says, ”the other [theory] is that it comes from the practice of knife grinders when sharpening blades to bend over the stone, or even to lie flat on their fronts, with their faces near the grindstone in order to hold the blades against the stone.”

Regardless of which one of these is the correct origin of the phrase ‘keep your nose to the grindstone,’ it has been quite some time since the typical American has seen a grindstone or millstone.

A grindstone is a solid round stone that turns while one uses it to sharpen tools, and a millstone is used to grind grain to make flour.

The idea would be that you’re working so hard that you’re hunched over your work and engrossed in completing the task.

Maybe someone should coin a new, technologically updated idiom, preferably one dealing with hunching over a computer.