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.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
&Thorn;ÓRgÍSl	-	Ancient Scandinavian
Hanif	-	Arabic
Ella (1)	EL-ə	English
Mayrbek	-	Chechen
Ildi	-	Hungarian
Maximilian	mahk-see-MEE-lee-ahn (German), mak-si-MIL-ee-ən (English), mak-si-MIL-yən (English)	German, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish