Meaning
So close to dying that the arrival is nearly announced - said of the critically ill, and by extension of anything tottering: firms, seasons, careers. The door in question opens both ways in speech, though reality usually has an opinion. Serious in medical contexts, ironic in financial and sporting ones; the capital letter appears when the door is personified. Regional use: General English.
Origin
Death's door is one of the language's oldest standing metaphors, and the printed record runs early: Walter Scott's Fair Maid of Perth has word in 1828 that the Duke of Rothsay is murdered, or at death's door - the phrase already idiom enough to finish a sentence. Jack London's sailor lay at death's door with blackwater fever in 1913; a chess columnist wrote in 1961 of a player literally at death's door in mid-game; and by 2008 Time could joke that a business with twenty-six billion dollars in cash reserves is not exactly at death's door - the metaphor fully portable from sickbeds to balance sheets. The idiom dictionaries date it to around 1850 in common use, with the literal doorway sense shading into the figurative standing at the door of death itself.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be at death's door
- knocking at death's door
Usage Examples
- The striker's season stood at death's door until the January window opened for surgery.
- Twice at death's door that winter, the matriarch outlived four of her specialists.
- The opera company, forever at death's door, scheduled its centenary season with a straight face.