Language tip of the week: busy

In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. In this series of language tips we look at how metaphor is used to express some common concepts in English. This week’s tip looks at metaphors used to talk about being busy:

Being very busy at work is like being covered with things or surrounded by something such as water or the ground, so that you cannot move easily.

They keep piling more work on me.
I’m up to my eyes/ears/eyeballs/neck in work.
I’m drowning in paperwork.
They had to wade through piles of documents.
I’m snowed under with work.
I don’t have time to turn around.
We’re absolutely swamped at the moment.
We’ve been inundated with phone calls.
They buried/immersed themselves in their work.