at death's door

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Idioms and Phrases

On the point of dying, very ill, as in Whenever she had a bad cold she acted as though she were at death's door . The association of death with an entry way was first made in English in the late 1300s, and the phrase itself dates from the mid-1500s. Today it is often used as an exaggeration of ill health.

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April 23, 2024inveterate

[in-vet-er-it ]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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