on one's shoulders

Idioms  

1. As one's responsibility, as in The king carries his entire country on his shoulders, or The success of the conference rests on Nancy's shoulders. This metaphoric use of shoulders as the burden-bearing part of the body dates from the late 1300s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

on one's shoulders

That was the curse of dreaming: One woke to pallid reality, with neither wings on one’s shoulders nor goddess in one’s arms.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

When one has an old man on one's shoulders one never can get rid of him.

From Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

A large, immovable body which one is expected to carry on one's shoulders through the mud.

From The Stars and Stripes The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 by United States. Army. American Expeditionary Forces

One's days are too brief to take the burden of another's sorrows on one's shoulders.

From Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde

The probability that a cougar is gathering his muscles on a limb with the intention of bounding down on one's shoulders, is enough to make the bravest man uneasy.

From The Lost Trail by Edward Sylvester Ellis