English · Idiom Candidate

work to rule

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To deliberately follow rules and regulations exactly, often to slow down work or protest.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Tuân thủ quy định một cách có chủ ý

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to work according to the rules

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

In both countries, the nature of railway work provides the workforce with a number of weapons short of strike action, notably bans on overtime and rest day working, and the work - to - rule.

Now that Bernard left industrial action to others, the heart had quite gone out of the staff's work - to - rule and normal relations were resumed.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “work to rule” mean?

To deliberately follow rules and regulations exactly, often to slow down work or protest. Literally: to work according to the rules

Is “work to rule” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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