beat one's brains out

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Idioms and Phrases

Make a great mental effort to understand, solve, or remember something, as in Joe's beating his brains out to finish this puzzle . Christopher Marlowe used this hyperbolic idiom in The Massacre of Paris (1593): “Guise beats his brains to catch us in his trap.” Also see rack one's brains .

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April 23, 2024inveterate

[in-vet-er-it ]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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