Word.ws English Dictionary

work oneself to the bone

work oneself to the bone is the alternative form of work one's fingers to the bone.

Meaning of work one's fingers to the bone

Verb

work one's fingers to the bone (third-person singular simple present works one's fingers to the bone, present participle working one's fingers to the bone, simple past and past participle worked one's fingers to the bone)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To work especially hard, usually for an extended period.
    • You work all week long / You work your fingers to the bone / Friday's at an end / I can't wait for Saturday to begin1983, “Get Down Saturday Night”, in Saturday Night, performed by Oliver Cheatham
    Synonyms:
    toil

Forms of work oneself to the bone

third-person singular presentworks oneself to the bone
present participleworking oneself to the bone
past participleworked oneself to the bone
pastworked oneself to the bone

Questions about work oneself to the bone

What is work oneself to the bone the alternative form of?
Work oneself to the bone is the alternative form of work one's fingers to the bone.

Words near work oneself to the bone in the dictionary

  1. work one's magic
  2. work one's passage
  3. work one's tail off
  4. work one's way
  5. work one's way up
  6. work oneself to the bone
  7. work order
  8. work orders
  9. work out
  10. work over
  11. work parties

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: work oneself to the bone (page history and authors); work one's fingers to the bone (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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Cite this entry: “work oneself to the bone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/work_oneself_to_the_bone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.