work one's fingers to the bone

Idioms and Phrases

Also, work one's tail or butt off . Exert oneself, labor very hard, as in She's working her fingers to the bone to support her children , or I work my tail off and then the government takes half my income in taxes . The first hyperbole, with its image of working the skin and flesh off one's fingers, dates from the mid-1800s; the less polite variants date from the first half of the 1900s.