tooth and nail
with all one's resources or energy; fiercely: We fought tooth and nail but lost.
Origin of tooth and nail
1Words Nearby tooth and nail
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use tooth and nail in a sentence
This award is fought over tooth-and-nail each year by political consultants from sea to shining sea.
The Strangest, Cheesiest, Most Brazenly False Political Ads of 2014 | Jack Holmes, The Daily Beast Video | November 3, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTImperiled as he is, he cannot recreate the tooth-and-nail desperation that fueled Shackleton.
Polar Explorer vs. Reality TV Crew: Tim Jarvis in the Footsteps of Shackleton | Darrell Hartman | January 12, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTWhen I do, it will be a tooth-and-nail fight, and I must be equipped with facts, not theories.
The Crevice | William John Burns and Isabel OstranderAnd the boy broke into a volley of oaths and flung himself once more tooth-and-nail on Reginald.
Reginald Cruden | Talbot Baines ReedTo be rolling at her feet, locked in a literally tooth-and-nail struggle with Ortega would have been odious.
The Arrow of Gold | Joseph Conrad
Anyhow, as such I am opposed tooth-and-nail to the iniquity of the existing Competitive System.
At the door of a thatched mud hut there was a fierce tooth-and-nail contest between two pigs.
Cultural definitions for tooth and nail
To fight “tooth and nail” is to fight with the intensity and ferocity of a wild animal: “The resistance forces fought the invading troops tooth and nail.”
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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