Dead As A Doornail Idiom Definition And Origin

| GRAMMARIST | IDIOM

Dead as a doornail is a phrase which means not alive, unequivocally deceased. The term goes back to the 1300s, the phrase dead as a doornail is found in poems of the time. The term dead as a doornail was used in the 1500s by William Shakespeare, and in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 1843. It is thought that the phrase dead as a doornail comes from the manner of securing doornails that were hammered into a door by clenching them.

Clenching is the practice of bending over the protruding end of the nail and hammering it into the wood. When a nail has been clenched, it has been dead nailed, and is not easily resurrected to use again.

An alternative wording of the phrase dead as a doornail is deader than a doornail.

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The common expression, “as dead as a doornail,” has a vague yet fascinating origin from the 1300s. It can be traced back to the famous poem of William Langland entitled Piers Plowman.

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