Nail in One’s Coffin

To drive a nail into one’s coffin. To shorten life by anxiety, drink, etc. Topers call a dram “a nail in their coffin,” in jocular allusion to the teetotal axiom.

“Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;

But every grin so merry draws one out.”

Peter Pindar (John Wolcot): Expostulatory

Odes, Ode xv.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.