English Help Online's Blog

I was recently explaining the meaning of the adjective “diligent” to a student, so I thought it would make a good entry for my blog. The word “diligent” is similar to “hard-working”, but it’s a little different. The word “hard-working” means that someone works a lot in a general way, but “diligent” is used when talking about a specific activity that someone always does when they’re supposed to do it. For example:

I’m very diligent about brushing my teeth three times a day. I think it’s very important to take care of your teeth.

I’m not very diligent about dusting my living room. I should do it at least once a week, but sometimes I get lazy and don’t do it for a long time.

It’s very important that you be diligent about filing the invoices. If you don’t do it everyday, we can lose track of them very easily.

So, as you can see, we always use the word “about” after “diligent”, and then it is followed the -ing form of a verb.