Name: This is where the phrase 'work cut out' comes from...
Uploaded: 2020-07-01T10:43:07.000Z
Duration: 2 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Welcome to the City. This area of London is where bankers and stockbrokers work.

City workers look smart and work hard, but how much do they know about where they work?

Past simple

If I said you had you work cut out for you, what does that mean?

That I'm very busy and got an awful lot to do in a short amount of time.

You've got quite a lot to do on a certain thing or a project.

The traffic's terrible. I've really got my work cut out getting there on time.

Where in the world do you think that saying first came from?

My guess would be that it's from some sort of tailoring and having to cut your work out.

Would it surprise you to learn that this saying was probably first used on this street,

Threadneedle Street was the home of tailoring in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Tailors worked with assistants. The assistants would cut out the cloth and the tailors would sew it.

If the tailor didn't work quickly enough, the pile of cloth would get bigger and bigger;

and because his work was cut out for him, he could clearly see that there was a

lot to do and it was all jumbled up in a mess.

In other words, he had a really difficult job ahead of him...

...just like the modern day Londoners here in the city, many of whom do difficult and stressful jobs too.

I tell you what… I've got my work cut out just trying to get across this road!