Word.ws English Dictionary

ate one's head off

ate one's head off is the simple past of eat one's head off.

Meaning of eat one's head off

Verb

eat one's head off (third-person singular simple present eats one's head off, present participle eating one's head off, simple past ate one's head off, past participle eaten one's head off)

  1. (idiomatic) Of an animal: to cost more to feed than it is worth.
    • 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

Questions about ate one's head off

What is ate one's head off the simple past of?
Ate one's head off is the simple past of eat one's head off.

Words near ate one's head off in the dictionary

  1. ate one's emotions
  2. ate one's feelings
  3. ate one's fill
  4. ate one's gun
  5. ate one's hat
  6. ate one's head off
  7. ate one's heart
  8. ate one's heart out
  9. ate one's own
  10. ate one's own dog food
  11. ate one's pride

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate one's head off (page history and authors); eat one's head off (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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