Meaning of eat one's head off | Babel Free

Definitions

Of an animal: to cost more to feed than it is worth.

idiomatic

Examples

“And then, as he sauntered up Whitehall towards Charing Cross, with Robarts on his arm, he again pressed upon him the sale of that invaluable hunter, who was eating his head off his shoulders in the stable at Chaldicotes.”

“Now Jim and I had found it necessary to buy a horse and cart, and the animal was eating its head off in a stable by the mill.”

“‘The strawberry leaves,’ said the young man. ‘The balm, the sceptre, and the ball. To say nothing of that dashed great barracks down at Denver, eating its mouldy head off.’”

“He knew that, only a few hours from London, the Hunt was cubbing over his ancestral and much-mortgaged acres, while his own horse ate its head off in a stable.”

CEFR level