Talk:eat one's head off
Add topicLatest comment: 4 years ago by Jonely Mash in topic Servants
Embarrassment
[edit]Chambers 1908 also has "eat one's head off, to be consumed with mortification". Perhaps something like eat one's heart out. I can't seem to find usage of this. Equinox ◑ 12:46, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Servants
[edit]John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873) adds: "Of late the phrase has been applied to servants who have little to do but constantly 'dip their noses in the manger.'" Equinox ◑ 20:34, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
- Maybe meaning eat someone out of house and home? Jonely Mash (talk) 20:38, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
- This quotation definitely means that. Perhaps to move to eat someone's head off
- 1890, [someone, possibly Sydney Hall? who may have been the illustrator] "Twenty Years Ago" in The Universal Review [1]
- I bought one for sixty francs, which was not extravagant in itself, but the horse at once began to eat my head off, costing me seven francs a day.