break the back of | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Tocompletethe greater part of (aproject) orsolvethe most critical part of (aproblem).I'vebroken the backof painting the shed – I'll finish it after lunch.1946, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons,Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).:[…]broke the back ofthe housing problem in this country .1974,The 1974 Economic Report of the President:I think we will find, or I predict that we will find, that during the course of this year we willbreak the back ofthe energy crisis.2023, Kas Hawes,The Heart of the Matter: A Day in the Life of a GP:I plan to grab my chance to take a break by trying tobreak the back ofall the tasks that have flown through the ether into my inbox during the course of the morning.; Tooverburden(a person, group, or organization).1962, Rajendra Prasad,Legacy of Gandhiji: Speeches, page 6:You will have heard of the three kathia system. Itbroke the back ofthe farmers.1992,Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, page1627:And it's about helping people provide for their workers, but doing it—I;m talking about health care, training—gut doing it in a way that just doesn'tbreak the back ofthe small business that's struggling anyway and make them lay off workers in order to accommodate some Federal mandate from Washington, DC.2004, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,Generic Pharmaceuticals, page86:It'll justbreak the back ofconsumers. It'llbreak the back ofpeople who are sick. It'llbreak the back ofMedicare,break the back ofstate governments and the Medicaid system .; Tocripple.1970, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Legal and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee,Federal Effort Against Organized Crime, page60:I don't think it hasbroken the back oforganized crime at all in the New England area, any more than I think when we got convictions in Buffalo that itbroke the back oforganized crime in Buffalo, or when Mr. McKeon got convictions in Detroit itbroke the back oforganized crime in Detroit.2015, Nellie Wong,Talking Back: Voices of Color:To prop up capitalism, the bosses and politicians from both parties are driving down the standard of living for the 99 percent and keeping the profits for themselves. In order to do this, they need tobreak the back ofthe labor movement.2021, Daurius Figueira,The Islamic State and the Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago in the 21st Century, page125:The Russian intervention thenbroke the back ofIS in north-western Syria enabling the knockout blow to fall on Raqqa in October 2017 as this was the last stand of IS.

Examples:

EN: But that day at Aintree it came to me that when you kill a lovely lad and break the back of a fine horse the devil's in it, and not kings.
ES: Pero ese día supe que si matas a un gran muchacho junto con su caballo el diablo está ahí, no los reyes.
EN: With my own eyes I've seen him break the back of a bull with one blow.
ES: Le he visto destrozar la espalda de un buey de un puñetazo.
EN: The countries most immediately threatened by Nazism formed an alliance and pledged to liberate occupied territory and to break the back of Nazism to destroy the evil at its very source and liquidate all such régimes
ES: Los países más inmediatamente amenazados por el nazismo... formaron una alianza y juraron liberar el territorio ocupado... y de literalmente quebrar la columna vertebral del nazismo... para extirpar el mal de raíz... y liquidar los regímenes que había originado.
EN: We want to make the prisons an asset, not a liability, for it is in the prisons that we will break the back of the I.R.A.
ES: Queremos que las cárceles funcionen a nuestro favor y no en nuestra contra. Porque es precisamente en las prisiones que quebraremos el respaldo que tiene el IRA.
EN: First they kill Petie to break the back of the Clericuzio.
ES: Primero mataron a Petie para partir a los Clericuzio en dos.
EN: If we can break the back of meade's troops here, we will march straight through the shenandoah valley, right to the steps of the capitol buildin'.
ES: Si somos capaces de romper la retagaurdia de las tropas de Meade aquí, marcharemos directamente a través del valle de Shenandoah, directo camino al edificio del Capitolio.
EN: Gee, that'll break the back of the wool industry.
ES: Vaya, eso hundiría muchas industrias.
EN: We're about to break the back of your distribution.
ES: Desarmaremos tu cadena de distribución.
EN: It'll break the back of your society.
ES: Romperá la espalda de su sociedad.
EN: If love wants to shake hands with you, don't break the back of it...
ES: Si el amor quiere estrecharte la mano, no te rompas la espalda ...
EN: We need to break the back of our oppressor.
ES: Tenemos que quebrarle la espalda a nuestra opresora.
EN: We'll break the back of 20-penny nails.
ES: Poner miles de clavos del 20.
EN: A limited chemical attack on that neighborhood would break the back of the insurgency.
ES: Un ataque químico limitado en ese barrio rompería el apoyo de la insurgencia.
EN: We compel him into a single, decisive fight, one in which we have a massive advantage and one in which, with a little luck, we might deal him a catastrophic defeat, break the back of his military strength,
ES: Le forzamos a un solo y decisivo combate, uno en el que tenemos una enorme superioridad y uno en el que, con un poco de fortuna, podríamos conducirle a una catastrófica derrota, doblegar su fortaleza militar,
EN: The goal was to break the back of the barley today, but we'd only done a couple of loads before Kaleb was on the radio.
ES: El objetivo era recoger hoy casi toda la cebada, pero solo llevábamos un par de cargas cuando Kaleb nos llamó por radio.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).