Comments on: Doornail, Dead as a http://www.word-detective.com/2011/12/doornail-dead-as-a/ Semper Ubi Sub Ubi Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:32:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dan Schwartz http://www.word-detective.com/2011/12/doornail-dead-as-a/comment-page-1/#comment-28520 Dan Schwartz Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:37:25 +0000 http://www.word-detective.com/?p=6014#comment-28520 Dickens discussed the matter in the first chapter of "A Christmas Carol":<blockquote> Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.</blockquote> It doesn't change anything you said, but it's what comes to my mind when I think of the phrase, and I was a little surprised you didn't mention it. Dickens discussed the matter in the first chapter of “A Christmas Carol”:
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

It doesn’t change anything you said, but it’s what comes to my mind when I think of the phrase, and I was a little surprised you didn’t mention it.

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