Word.ws English Dictionary

on the nail

on the nail prepositional phrase: immediately, without delay.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (Ireland, UK) Immediately, without delay.
    • Tell me, have you a mind to anything in the Doctor's book? Speak the word, and I will help you to it upon the nail.1596, Thomas Nashe, Have With You To Saffron Walden
    • You shall have ten thousand pounds on the nail, and I will take you back to London with me besides and teach you what is fortune.1845, Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, Or, The Two Nations
    Synonyms:
    on the double
  2. (Ireland, UK) Exactly.
    • Six o'clock on the nail. She wasn't going to be late.2009, Cathy Kelly, What She Wants
    Synonyms:
    on the dot

on the nail meaning in Malayalam

on the nail in Malayalam

at once, immediately, without delay
വിളംബംവിനാ, എത്രയും വേഗം, പൊരുക്കെന്ന്, പെട്ടെന്ന്, ഉടൻ, ഈ ക്ഷണത്തിൽ

Synonyms of on the nail

Origin of on the nail

Allegedly from the tradition of striking bargains by placing cash on the nails in Bristol, Limerick and Liverpool. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, cites an Anglo-Norman phrase from c. 1360, "payer sur le ungle" to pay on the (finger)nail meaning "to pay immediately and in full", and the Latin "ad unguem", exactly. It quotes parallel usages from 17th century French, Dutch and German sources and adds that "N.E.D. (1906) notes that: ‘the explanations associating it with certain pillars at the Exchange of Limerick or Bristol are too late to be of any authority in deciding the question’."

Questions about on the nail

What does on the nail mean?
On the nail means immediately, without delay.
What is on the nail in Malayalam?
On the nail in Malayalam is വിളംബംവിനാ, എത്രയും വേഗം, പൊരുക്കെന്ന്. See On the nail meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is on the nail?
On the nail is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the nail in the dictionary

  1. on the merits
  2. on the money
  3. on the mop
  4. on the move
  5. on the muscle
  6. on the nail
  7. on the needle
  8. on the nick
  9. on the nod
  10. on the nose
  11. on the nut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the nail (page history and authors); on the nail (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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 the nail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_nail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.