work to rule
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To deliberately follow rules and regulations exactly, often to slow down work or protest.
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.