in extremis

Prepositional phrase

1. At the point of death.
   • Military records describing the deaths of men as a result of injuries sustained during combat employed the phrase in a (now near-obsolete) sense to describe a man on the verge of dying: […] 'He was in extremis when seen and died about 2 hours after the action ceased at 9 pm'.2018 December 13, Edmund Richardson, Classics in Extremis: The Edges of Classical Reception, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 116
2. (broadly) In desperate circumstances.
   • The purpose, of course, was to find out if the prisoner, in extremis, broke down and wrote to a family in Israel.2001 [1990], Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 410
   • This book sets out to look at what we have termed 'social work in extremis'. It is an attempt to bring together a number of case studies that look at social work responses in 'extreme' or crisis situations.2011, Michael Lavalette, Vasilios Ioakimidis, Social Work in Extremis: Lessons for Social Work Internationally, Policy Press, →ISBN, page 1