Word.ws English Dictionary

death by a thousand paper cuts

death by a thousand paper cuts noun: an ultimate negative outcome, such as the failure of a project, brought about by an excessive number of bureaucratic hurdles.

Noun

death by a thousand paper cuts

  1. (idiomatic) An ultimate negative outcome, such as the failure of a project, brought about by an excessive number of bureaucratic hurdles.

Forms of death by a thousand paper cuts

alternative formdeath by a thousand papercuts

Origin of death by a thousand paper cuts

Blend of death by a thousand cuts + paper cut. The "thousand cuts" of the original phrase are now inflicted by paper, a metonym for bureaucracy.

Questions about death by a thousand paper cuts

What does death by a thousand paper cuts mean?
Death by a thousand paper cuts means an ultimate negative outcome, such as the failure of a project, brought about by an excessive number of bureaucratic hurdles.
What part of speech is death by a thousand paper cuts?
Death by a thousand paper cuts is a noun.

Words near death by a thousand paper cuts in the dictionary

  1. death blow
  2. death blows
  3. death book
  4. death books
  5. death by a thousand cuts
  6. death by a thousand paper cuts
  7. death by a thousand papercuts
  8. death by chocolate
  9. death by coconut
  10. death by cop
  11. death by misadventure

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death by a thousand paper cuts (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “death by a thousand paper cuts.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death_by_a_thousand_paper_cuts. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.