on one's last legs
7
7.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
al borde del colapso
- After hiking for hours, I could feel that I was on my last legs and needed to rest.
- truly on one's last legs
Examples
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Your vision's blurred and you're on your last legs.
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Unfortunately, my laptop is on its last legs.
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The old girl's on her last legs, boys.
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I thought you were on your last legs.
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The dog is on its last legs.
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For a while, it looked like the company was on its last legs.
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It's on its last legs.
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Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, but I think it's on its last legs.
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And the water pump is on its last legs.
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By 1975, Sheffield was on its last legs.
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Synonyms
38
2.7
Feeling weak and about to lose consciousness
11
7.5
You are unable to deal with something because you have no patience or energy
2
7.1
Very tired after hard physical or mental work
1
8.5
Very tired and cannot deal with a situation any more
Very tired after hard physical activity
Feeling very tired after physical effort
Feeling tired and weak
Antonyms
How Tired
- Informal
2
7.1
- Informal
7
7.2
104
2.0
129
3.2
∞
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase uses a fairly transparent bodily metaphor: 'legs' as support and 'last' indicating the final remaining ones, so a learner who knows the words can plausibly infer a meaning like 'near collapse' or 'very weak/tired'. However, the mapping from the literal image to the idiomatic state of exhaustion is metaphorical and conventionalized (though many languages have similar expressions), so the meaning is only partially predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
On one's last legs may come from the image of a very old horse, person, or machine that can hardly stand and seems to be held up by its last legs. That's why the phrase means 'very tired, weak, or close to stopping'.