burn the candle at both ends
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: burns the candle at both ends
form: burning the candle at both ends
form: burned the candle at both ends
form: burned the candle at both ends
form: burnt the candle at both ends
form: burnt the candle at both ends
form: burn one's candle at both ends
Etymology: Calque of French brûler la chandelle par les deux bouts. First attested in the 18th century, originally in the sense “to be doubly profligate”.
Senses: examples: text: 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. […]
ref: 1911, Edna Ferber, chapter 8, in Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed:
text: 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!"
ref: 2012, John Mulaney, 0:01:05 from the start, in John Mulaney: New in Town:
glosses: To work hard night and day; to sleep late and wake up early; to overwork or overexert oneself.
examples: text: 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; […]
ref: 1866 May, “Large and Small Companies”, in The Bankers’ Magazine […], volume 26, pages 530–1:
text: 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; […]
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1905 March, William Hamilton Osborne, “The Transfer of Thorneycroft”, in The Smart Set, volume 15, number 3, page 95:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1989, Dragon Wars (video game manual), Interplay Productions, page 1:
glosses: To waste or expend resources twice over; to be doubly profligate.
Related terms: burn the midnight oil
not worth the candle
the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long