Only Phrases

Meaning
When somebody puts too much pressure on mind to recall or understand something, we use this phrase.

Origin
Shakespeare used this in Twelfth Night, 1601:
“How haue the houres rack’d, and tortur’d me, Since I haue lost thee?”

William Beveridge’s Sermons, circa 1680 had this phrase as:
“They rack their brains… they hazard their lives for it.”