to save one's life

Idioms  

1. Even if one's life depended on it, as in I couldn't eat another bite to save my life, or Betty wouldn't climb a mountain to save her life. This hyperbolic expression nearly always follows a negative statement that one wouldn't or couldn't do something. Anthony Trollope used a slightly different wording in The Kellys and the O'Kellys (1848): “I shan't remain long, if it was to save my life and theirs; I can't get up small talk for the rector and his curate.”

---

Example Sentences

Thus, one would be bound to undergo an operation for appendicitis in order to save one's life.

From Project Gutenberg

As well wrap oneself confidingly in the folds of a boa-constrictor, hoping to save one's life thereby.

From Project Gutenberg

Hand to hand fights with wild animals, battles between ships of the line, vicious duels between ace-aviators in the clouds are tense fights; but they cannot compare in anxious difficulty with the struggle to bring up an unformed idea out of the subconscious mind—especially when one knows that the idea is there, and that it must be found to save one's life.

From Project Gutenberg

Meantime the Smith sat there, thinking, “What’s to be done? how’s one to save one’s life?”

From Project Gutenberg

And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian, or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them call England the Hell of Horses.

From Project Gutenberg