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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Hi! I am a newcomer to the forum so forgive me if I haven’t documented this properly. I came across it a few days ago in comments to a political blog: “X will be the deathnail for candidate Y’s campaign.”
I see it has been used in a few similar circumstances:
http://uscannenblog.blogspot.com/2008/0 … hnail.html
Some people have elaborated on it, adding “drive the deathnail into”, as here:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8963
or “it’s the deathnail in the coffin of..”:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2PE4KCY5U … Q1&nodeID=
It’s hard to assess the wideness of this usage, there being a band called “Deathnail” which accounts for a good portion of Google hits.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share this funny neologism.
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Welcome to the forum, ladelfina. This is a good one, and it’s been submitted to the forum a number of times. I think the earliest post was this one by Ken Lakritz: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=86
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