put to work

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put to work (third-person singular simple present puts to work, present participle putting to work, simple past and past participle put to work)

1. (idiomatic) to put to use
   • 2008, David L. Goetsch, Taking Your Faith to Work, →ISBN, page 26:

     Clearly, empathy is a Scriptural concept that Christians can put to work in becoming better leaders.

   • 2008, Elisabeth Doucett, Creating Your Library Brand, →ISBN, page 26:

     Once you develop a great brand, you need to put it to work. The simple rule of thumb is that you should use your brand everywhere you can.

   • 2008, Kevin Cameron, Sportbike Performance Handbook, →ISBN, page 103:

     But there is useful energy in the exhaust pressure pulse, and what a turbocharger does is to put it to work driving a supercharger.

2. Give a job; Force to work (even if it is make-work)
   • 2007, David P. Levine, Welfare, Right and the State: A Framework for Thinking, →ISBN, page 28:

     Insistence that those who become dependent on the state be put to work seeks to impose the demands of the reality principle on them or to punish them by forcing them to do the unskilled work inconsistent with creative living.

   • 1998, Jerry Bruce Thomas, An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression, →ISBN, page 28:

     The able-bodied unemployed, who were without work because of the Depression, he believed should be put to work by the federal government at wages higher than the dole but lower than the prevailing wage so as not to encourage the rejection of opportunities for private employment "until economic recovery would make work relief unnecessary."

   • 2004, Rodney Dale Whipple, Lorna Lynch, Say Goodbye To Skolobow, →ISBN, page 167:

     That night, he told Ernst that Peter wanted to put him to work “to keep him out of trouble,” as he'd put it.