burn the candle at both ends

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Calque of French brûler la chandelle par les deux bouts. First attested in the 18th century, originally in the sense “to be doubly profligate”.[1]

Verb[edit]

burn the candle at both ends (third-person singular simple present burns the candle at both ends, present participle burning the candle at both ends, simple past and past participle burned the candle at both ends or burnt the candle at both ends)

  1. (idiomatic) To work hard night and day; to sleep late and wake up early; to overwork or overexert oneself.
    • 1911, Edna Ferber, chapter 8, in Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed‎[1]:
      Von Gerhard's face was unsmiling. “So,” he said, slowly. “You burn the candle at both ends. All day you write, is it not so? And at night you come home to write still more? Ach, Kindchen!—Na, we shall change all that. […]
    • 2012, John Mulaney, 0:01:05 from the start, in John Mulaney: New in Town:
      I don’t look older, I just look worse, I think. Honestly, when I’m walking down the street, no one’s ever like, “Hey, look at that man!” I think they’re just like “Whoa! That tall child looks terrible! Get some rest, tall child! You can't keep burning the candle at both ends!" […] Just take my kindergarten photo and yellow the teeth and put bags under the eyes and be like “This is what he would look like now.” […]
  2. (idiomatic, dated) To waste or expend resources twice over; to be doubly profligate.
    • 1866 May, “Large and Small Companies”, in The Bankers’ Magazine […], volume 26, pages 530–1:
      The dividends […] were divided from capital and not from profit—for, in truth, the concern never earned a penny in the sense in which the term profit is commonly employed. […] The pipe-making concern burned the candle at both ends, and burned it steadily; […]
    • 1892 February 17, H. M. Grant, “What Do We Learn?”, in Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Fire Underwriters’ Association of the Pacific, published 1892, page 154:
      And another thing not to be forgotten is that the expense rate, the cost of production, has kept pace with the reduction in premiums, thus burning the candle at both ends; […]
    • 1905 March, William Hamilton Osborne, “The Transfer of Thorneycroft”, in The Smart Set, volume 15, number 3, page 95:
      Speaking financially, Mrs. Ormsby had burned the candle at both ends. Her establishment was costly on the one hand; her pleasures costly on the other.
    • 1963, Karl Bradshaw, “Statement of Karl Bradshaw, Duckwater, Nev.”, in Review of the Taylor Grazing Act: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Lands […] United States Senate, Eighty-Eighth Congress, First Session […], page 318:
      Now the Department of the Interior is trying to burn the candle at both ends by narrowing the margin of profit and at the same time cutting down the amount of production.
    • 1989, Dragon Wars (video game manual), Interplay Productions, page 1:
      Oceana is a world younger than our own, wedded to a star with but a fraction of the life expectancy of Sol. It is a world burning the candle at both ends, enjoying twice the light in half the time, and spinning all the faster toward annihilation and the Void.

Translations[edit]

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See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Gary Martin (1997–) “Burn the candle at both ends”, in The Phrase Finder.

Further reading[edit]

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