that does it
- idiom
- Informal
- When he ignored our warnings for the last time, we all agreed, 'That does it; we need to take action now.'
- Okay, that does it
- Well, that does it
- Oh, that does it
Examples
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Well, that does it then.
Blog text (23) -
- That does it for me!
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Yeah, I think that does it for for this week's podcast.
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And I think that does it for VR News.
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- All right, that does it, Frankie, man!
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"That does it," the Mayor said grimly.
Fiction book (1992) -
Okay, that does it.
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- That does it!
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That does it!
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That does it.
Synonyms
A final decision that cannot be changed or discussed
The end when nothing more can be said or done
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The parts ('that' pointing to a prior action, 'does' = causes, 'it' as a pronoun) give a clue that something just caused a decisive result, but the pragmatic force ‘enough is enough’ (final tolerance reached, threat of consequences) is not fully derivable from the literal meanings. Understanding the exact communicative effect requires familiarity with the idiomatic usage and discourse context, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents may not reliably infer the full sense.
Etymology
That does it may come from the image of a pile of small problems where one last thing finally does it and the pile falls. So that does it means 'enough is enough' and you will not accept any more.