nail in the coffin

nail in the coffin

An event, decision, action, etc., that can or will lead to the failure or cessation of something. The candidate's uncouth comment about the lower class was the final nail in the coffin. That class action lawsuit could be a nail in the coffin of a company that has already seen its fair share of controversy.
See also: coffin, nail
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a nail in the coffin

an action or event regarded as likely to have a detrimental or destructive effect on a situation, enterprise, or person.
1981 R. Lancaster Plant Hunting in Nepal A major nail in the coffin of the plant hunter, so some people believe, is the growing importance placed on plant conservation in the wild.
See also: coffin, nail
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • a nail in the coffin
  • nail in the coffin of (something)
  • wild and woolly
  • wild and woolly (West), the
  • woolly
  • (Someone or something) called, they want their (something) back!
  • Were you born in a barn?
  • strike over
  • strike over (something)
  • raised by wolves
References in periodicals archive
The new drug bill is most likely the final nail in the coffin to ensure there can never be a national LTC program for everyone.
Medicare Rx: a huge help for long term care insurance sales
Another specialist in avian aerodynamics, Matthew Evans of the University of Stirling in Scotland, pronounces the test results "the first nail in the coffin" for bird aeronautics based on delta-wing models.
Tests hint bird tails are misunderstood
Jaskot has nonetheless put another nail in the coffin of Leon Krier's extraordinary attempt to exonerate the Nazi monuments by removing them from their political context.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF OPPRESSION: THE SS, FORCED LABOUR AND THE NAZI MONUMENTAL BUILDING ECONOMY
I think the global credential could be another nail in the coffin of our rightfully proud profession.
SPECIAL LETTERS SECTION SPEAK OUT!
"I think it will be the final nail in the coffin, so to speak."
Cancellation policy
"This bill is just one more nail in the coffin of family life," she said.
Parliament won't consent to 16
Called "another nail in the coffin of financial privacy" by Financial Privacy Report Publisher Mike Ketcher, the new rules would force anyone sending more than $750 abroad to provide identification to the financial institution wiring the money and have the transaction reported to the Treasury Department.
Don't leave home
The water increase, Strasburg said, "is another nail in the coffin that is hurting not-for-profits the most."
Cost increases low, RGB says
In contrast to the conventional view of blackface minstrelsy as the nail in the coffin of antebellum racial stasis, Brown sees it--rightly, I think--as an arena in which ripping social transformation was registered and even activated.
Darktown Strutters
to mothball its Thunder Bay division could turn out to be the last nail in the coffin for several area sawmills.
Thunder Bay sawmills scramble to find buyers for surplus of wood chips created by mill's closing
Whitfield's book indicates that, in killing Till, two white southerners only put another nail in the coffin of the very thing they were trying to keep alive.
A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
He said long march will prove to be a last nail in the coffin of government and midterm elections will take place due to the long march.
Aug 14 March will be last nail of govt's coffin: Sh Rashid
Leading pension experts said the re-emergence of a sizeable black hole marked a nail in the coffin for generous schemes and predicted the end of final salary pensions in the private sector.
Pensions crunch; Inbrief
The fact that it was a Labour Government that introduced them is perhaps the ultimate irony and nail in the coffin for the kind of left wing radicalism that used to dominate university campuses.
THE BIRMINGHAM POST: Lost rebels
Defender Senderos was axed for Sunday's defeat at Manchester United which put the final nail in the coffin of the Gunners' title challenge.
PHIL UP AGAIN