do one's duty

present singular third person does one's duty · participle present doing one's duty · past did one's duty · participle past done one's duty

1. euphemisticSynonym of use the toilet: to urinate or defecate.

   And when I was being toilet-trained as a very little boy, she'd always ask, "Have you done your duty?" That was the word for it.

   1996, Derrick Humphreys, John A. Munro, The making of a grey panther: the Derrick Humphreys story, page 8

   1 more example

   If a society is incapable of that kind of trust, it is also incapable of freedom. But if one really believes that only productivity can create strength — that a human being, in other words, has to justify himself or herself by producing something — then maybe the psychoanalysts are right, and everything does go back to toilet training and mother's saying, "Have you produced today, have you done your duty?"

   2012, Alan Watts, Zen and the Beat Way

   Synonyms: use the toilet

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see do, duty.

   Synonyms: use the toilet, urinate and Thesaurus:defecate