eat one's head off

present singular third person eats one's head off · participle present eating one's head off · past ate one's head off · participle past eaten one's head off

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

   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.

   1908, D. F. E. Sykes, Miriam: A Tale of Pole Moor and the Greenfield Hills

   3 more 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.

   1861, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage

   ‘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.’

   1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

   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.

   1943, Stuart Palmer, The Puzzle of the Silver Persian