beat one's brains out



beat one's brains out

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.
See also: beat, brain, out

Common Names:

NameGenderPronouncedUsage
JÓN-Icelandic, Faroese
Rameshvara-Hinduism
&Thorn;ÓRgnÝR-Ancient Scandinavian
Merryn-Cornish
KizzyKIZ-eeEnglish
GinnieJIN-eeEnglish