Word.ws English Dictionary

on death's doorstep

on death's doorstep phrase: almost dead.

Phrase

on death's doorstep

  1. Almost dead.
    • By the time she decided to seek help from a Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) center near her village, she was on death's doorstep: dizzy and unable to walk, much less work.2017, Anat Rosenthal, Health on Delivery
    • But in my family, you follow through on your commitments and show up at school or work unless you are on death's doorstep. But maybe I was on death's doorstep, because Mom and I didn't even discuss the idea of my leaving the house.2018, Leila Sales, If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say

Origin of on death's doorstep

Probably a shortening of the phrasal verb sit on death's doorstep.

Questions about on death's doorstep

What does on death's doorstep mean?
On death's doorstep means almost dead.
What part of speech is on death's doorstep?
On death's doorstep is a phrase.

Words near on death's doorstep in the dictionary

  1. on contact
  2. on course
  3. on credit
  4. on cue
  5. on dead dogs
  6. on death's doorstep
  7. on deck
  8. on deck circle
  9. on deck circles
  10. on demand
  11. on display

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on death's doorstep (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.

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Cite this entry: “on death's doorstep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_death%27s_doorstep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.