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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boyA person who never takes time off from work becomes boring and bored.
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all work and no play (makes Jack a dull boy)
all work and no play (makes Jack a dull boy)Hard work without time for recreation is not good for one's health, as in If Harry keeps up that grueling schedule, he's headed for a breakdown—all work and no play isn't healthy. A proverb included in James Howell's collection of 1659, this phrase remains so familiar that it is often shortened, as in the example.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
CulturalExample Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I just don't really feel like it at the moment because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
From New York Times • Apr. 17, 2018
Is it true that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?
From The Mind and Its Education by Betts, George Herbert
But there never was a truer statement than that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
From Community Civics and Rural Life by Dunn, Arthur William
And Daddy Blake believed, as do many fathers, that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
From Daddy Takes Us to the Garden The Daddy Series for Little Folks by Garis, Howard Roger
All men need a holiday, for "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
From Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades by Holbrook, Florence
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.