Upper-Intermediate 💬 Idioms & Phrasal Verbs · #43 of 182

Idiom: Burn the Midnight Oil

work late into the night

Examples

  • She burned the midnight oil.

Key rules

  • Burn the midnight oil means work late into the night
  • It is informal and comes from the days of oil lamps
  • It usually appears in the past tense in stories: She burned the midnight oil
  • The phrase is fixed; do not pluralise "oil"

Common mistakes

  • Burned the midnight oils → Burned the midnight oil
💡 Tip: "Burned" (US) and "burnt" (UK) are both accepted past forms.
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