Meaning
Describing a final, desperate attempt or stand made after everything else has failed and nothing remains in reserve. Nearly always attributive, modifying words such as effort, attempt, bid, stand, or defence, and the tone is desperation rather than mere lateness. Attributive and faintly dramatic; it almost always modifies effort, attempt, bid, stand, or defence. Regional use: General English (military origin).
Origin
The image is the innermost entrenchment of a fortified position: the final ditch dug before a defence collapses. Its fame rests on the vow attributed to William of Orange (later King William III) during the French invasion of the Dutch Republic in 1672, that there was one way never to see his country's ruin, namely 'to die in the last ditch'. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest print citations, as summarised by Grammarphobia, are Daniel Defoe's poem Jure Divino (1706) and Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time (written before 1715); the Online Etymology Dictionary dates the image in English from 1715. The hyphenated adjective is later: the OED's first citation is from 1888, while the Online Etymology Dictionary gives 1909, and the now-familiar sense of a desperate eleventh-hour effort is twentieth-century (first OED citation 1935). A frequently repeated attribution to Frederick the Great, said to have vowed to defend his possessions 'to the last ditch', finds no support in the standard references; the documented credit is William of Orange.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- die in the last ditch
- last-ditch attempt
- last-ditch effort
- last-ditch stand
- to the last ditch
Usage Examples
- Engineers made a last-ditch attempt to restart the cooling pumps before the core temperature passed the safety limit.
- In a last-ditch defence of her title, the champion saved three match points in the deciding set.
- The union authorised the strike only as a last-ditch measure after months of failed talks.