break the back of

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break the back of (third-person singular simple present breaks the back of, present participle breaking the back of, simple past broke the back of, past participle broken the back of)

1. (idiomatic) To complete the greater part of (a project) or solve the most critical part of (a problem).

   I've broken the back of painting the shed – I'll finish it after lunch.

   • 1946, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).:

     […] broke the back of the 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 will break the back of the 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 to break the back of all the tasks that have flown through the ether into my inbox during the course of the morning.

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) To overburden (a person, group, or organization).
   • 1962, Rajendra Prasad, Legacy of Gandhiji: Speeches, page 6:

     You will have heard of the three kathia system. It broke the back of the farmers.

   • 1992, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, page 1627:

     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't break the back of the 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, page 86:

     It'll just break the back of consumers. It'll break the back of people who are sick. It'll break the back of Medicare, break the back of state governments and the Medicaid system .

3. To cripple.
   • 1970, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Legal and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee, Federal Effort Against Organized Crime, page 60:

     I don't think it has broken the back of organized crime at all in the New England area, any more than I think when we got convictions in Buffalo that it broke the back of organized crime in Buffalo, or when Mr. McKeon got convictions in Detroit it broke the back of organized 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 to break the back of the labor movement.

   • 2021, Daurius Figueira, The Islamic State and the Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago in the 21st Century, page 125:

     The Russian intervention then broke the back of IS in north-western Syria enabling the knockout blow to fall on Raqqa in October 2017 as this was the last stand of IS.

• break someone's back