do duty as

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Having reached Safeway with no fatalities, Stassin and I ordered our respective Loomos to trail us, so that they could do duty as shopping carts.

From The New Yorker • Nov. 19, 2018

Beside it lay an absurd 72 bit of crumpled, tear-soaked embroidery that had been intended to do duty as a handkerchief but had evidently proved quite unseaworthy.

From Robinetta by McAulay, Allan

Masters, midshipmen, and pursers must do duty as seamen.

From Down the Rhine Young America in Germany by Optic, Oliver

It often happens that an amount of resemblance only sufficient for a rhetorical simile is made to do duty as a solid argument.

From Logic, Inductive and Deductive by Minto, William

Assistant-surgeon Crawford, having no sick in hospital, generously offered to do duty as officer of the day, and his offer was gladly accepted.

From Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 by Doubleday, Abner