last resort

Noun

last resort (plural last resorts)

1. (idiomatic) The only remaining, often least desirable, option when all others have been excluded.
   • I wouldn't recommend doing surgery on yourself, unless it is a last resort.
   • The present writer was once asked to name what he considered to be "the most typically English railway approach to a town": a somewhat tall order, especially as such matters will always be, in the last resort, of individual opinion. But the unhesitating answer to this question (which has not been...1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 705

   Synonyms:

   last refuge