What does ‘burn the candle at both ends’ mean?

Last updated Jul 22, 2026
Published by All Direct Answers · Licensed under Citation License 1.0

To “burn the candle at both ends” means to exhaust yourself by doing too much. A very old English proverb; Brewer's records the image, and Edna St. Vincent Millay's 1920 poem popularised it in the modern sense.

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