die with one's boots on

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).