a real workhorse, a hard grafter
Meu avô era pé-de-boi: trabalhou na roça a vida inteira.
My grandfather was a real workhorse — he worked the fields his whole life.
Pé de boi literally means "ox's foot." The image draws on the ox as the classic draft animal — strong, plodding and tireless, pulling its load day after day without complaint. Applied to a person, it describes a hard, steady worker who keeps at the job dependably.
Falando's Idiom Trainer teaches you to recognize idiom meanings and create sentences using them, so you can speak like a Brazilian.
