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be-all and end-all, the
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Idioms and Phrases
The most important element or purpose, as in Buying a house became the be-all and end-all for the newlyweds . Shakespeare used this idiom in Macbeth (1:6), where Macbeth muses that “this blow might be the be-all and the end-all” for his replacing Duncan as king. [Late 1500s]Advertisement
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[tawr-choo-uhs ]
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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