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die with one's boots on
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Idioms and Phrases
Also, die in harness . Expire while working, keep working to the end, as in He'll never retire—he'll die with his boots on , or She knows she'll never get promoted, but she wants to die in harness . Both phrases probably allude to soldiers who died on active duty. Until the early 1600s the noun boot denoted a piece of armor for the legs, which may have given rise to this usage; and Shakespeare used harness in the sense of armor when he wrote: “At least we'll die with harness on our back” ( Macbeth 5:5).Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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