The sort of people who humorously say ‘Eat your heart out’ are also likely to say ‘To die for!’ as if they had just coined either phrase.
‘Eat your heart out’ has adjusted its meaning since the Oxford English Dictionary was redacted — 1893 for the letter E, edited by Henry Bradley. Then the definition was, ‘To suffer from silent grief or vexation’. Now an element of jealousy is added.
The OED quotes Spenser from the 1590s, but there is a celebrated passage in the contemporary Essays of Francis Bacon, warning how bad it is not to have a confidant. Bacon says that Charles the Hardy (whom we call the Bold) would communicate to no one the secrets that troubled him, and this ‘closenesse did impaire, and a little perish his understanding’. Bacon’s source is Commenius (Philippe de Commines), the biographer of Louis XI, whose own ‘closenesse was indeed his Tormentour’.
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