Word.ws English Dictionary

eaten one's head off

eaten one's head off is the past participle 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 eaten one's head off

What is eaten one's head off the past participle of?
Eaten one's head off is the past participle of eat one's head off.

Words near eaten one's head off in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eaten 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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