At death's door
Meaning
To be very close to dying, often due to severe illness or extreme old age.
Origin
The potent imagery of death as a physical threshold, a 'door' or 'gate' one must pass through, is an ancient and cross-cultural concept, deeply embedded in human mythology and religious thought. From the gates of Hades in Greek mythology to various underworlds across different faiths, the idea of a portal between the living and the dead is a persistent one. This enduring metaphor eventually solidified into the English idiom 'at death's door,' vividly capturing the precarious state of someone teetering on the very brink of mortality, as if standing right before that final, inescapable entrance.
Examples
- After battling pneumonia for weeks, the old man was truly at death's door, barely clinging to life.
- The doctors feared the worst; she had been at death's door for days before finally showing signs of recovery.