hoe one's row

English

Verb

hoe one's row (third-person singular simple present hoes one's row, present participle hoeing one's row, simple past and past participle hoed one's row)

1. (idiomatic) To do one's share of a job.

   Synonym: do one's bit

   • 1857, Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, A Discourse […] Delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, June 7, 1857.:

     I have to begin where I left off; but you cannot realize but that you have to take one jump away ahead, when you come to leave your bodies and go into the spirit world. That is not so, for you will have to commence to hoe your row where you left off.

   • 1911, Hugh Pendexter, The Young Timber-cruisers; or, Fighting the Spruce Pirates, =chapter 2:

     “I ain’t sharing my room with assassins. Gilvey is ignorant and a brute. If you say so I’ll join you and we’ll lick him. We could do it easy, only it wouldn’t help you much. For the men would say I had to help you hoe your row.”

   • 1913, Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, To The South:

     There was a time when, jocund as the day,
     The toiler hoed his row and sung his lay,
     Found something gleeful in the very air,
     And solace for his toiling everywhere.

References

• “hoe”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.