Word.ws English Dictionary

on one's last legs

on one's last legs prepositional phrase: about to die.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) About to die.
    • [A] friend who assists me with a view to future profit . . . lies like the fox's scent when on his last legs, increasing every moment.1824, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 6, in St. Ronan's Well
    • He is on his last legs. His kidneys are 'most gone. Remember, 'tis I must bury him.1913, Jack London, chapter 6, in The Valley of the Moon
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) About to lose viability or become defunct.
    • My computer's on its last legs; it crashes running Minesweeper.
    • [T]he wood was main dark, but had a kind of a low glow in it like a fire on its last legs.1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Beach of Falesa”, in Island Nights' Entertainments

on one's last legs meaning in Myanmar

on one's last legs in Myanmar

about to die
ယဲ့ယဲ့ yai.yai.

Questions about on one's last legs

What does on one's last legs mean?
On one's last legs means about to die.
What is on one's last legs in Myanmar?
On one's last legs in Myanmar is ယဲ့ယဲ့ (yai.yai.). See On one's last legs meaning in Myanmar.
What part of speech is on one's last legs?
On one's last legs is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on one's last legs in the dictionary

  1. on one's high horse
  2. on one's honor
  3. on one's Jack Jones
  4. on one's knees
  5. on one's L's
  6. on one's last legs
  7. on one's lee-lane
  8. on one's legs
  9. on one's lonesome
  10. on one's Ls
  11. on one's mark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on one's last legs (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-on one's last legs.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on one's last legs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_one%27s_last_legs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.