at death's door

Idioms  

1. On the point of dying, very ill, as in Whenever she had a bad cold she acted as though she were at death's door. The association of death with an entry way was first made in English in the late 1300s, and the phrase itself dates from the mid-1500s. Today it is often used as an exaggeration of ill health.

---

Example Sentences

"She was at death's door, and she knew I could write, so she asked me to write her an elegy if the worst came to the worst."

From BBC • Nov. 10, 2025

They want to let patients like Zurawski obtain lifesaving care before they are actually at death’s door.

From Slate • Mar. 7, 2023

There was something different happening here: the ex-con at death’s door coming clean with his regrets.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 8, 2021

Premature grief is the specter hovering over war-torn Yemen’s famine cases — malnourished children at death’s door — in Skye Fitzgerald’s latest dispatch from the Middle East, “Hunger Ward.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 1, 2021

“I suppose you told him I’m at death’s door or something,” Franny said.

From "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger

Related Words

• decaying
• doomed
• fading
• moribund