Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Translated directly from a 17th-century French phrase, "brusler la chandelle par les deux bouts," recorded in a 1611 French-English dictionary. Candles were a genuine household expense, and lighting one at both ends to work by, rather than just the top, burned through it far faster, making the phrase's original meaning closer to "wasteful" than "overworked." Over time "both ends" was reinterpreted as the beginning and end of the day, rising before dawn and working past dark, giving the phrase its modern sense of self-imposed exhaustion. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay popularised the image further in her 1918 poem "First Fig."