Burn the midnight oil

At one time there was a verb for working late by candlelight - elucubrate. Henry Cockeram defined that in his The English dictionarie, or an interpreter of hard English words, 1623:
"Elucubrate, to doe a thing by candlelight."

In 1635 English author Francis Quarles wrote in Emblemes,
"Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle;
Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle."

Candles, or midnight oil, was needed when there was no electricity. So now that we have electricity the phrase isn't necessary but is still used to figuratively mean that someone is working long and late hours.
(source)

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Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

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