Pistol

As NAIL in door.” Dickens, in that marvellous little book, A Christmas Carol , says: — “Old Marley was as dead as a DOOR-NAIL . “Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about a DOOR-NAIL . I might have been inclined myself to regard a COFFIN-NAIL as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile: and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a DOOR-NAIL .” Nail in one’s coffin , a dram, “a drop o’ summat’ short,” a jocular, but disrespectful phrase, used by the lower orders to each other at the moment of lifting a gla of spirits to their lips. “Well, good luck! here’s another NAIL IN MY COFFIN .” This is probably in ridicule of teetotal or temperance preachers, and the arguments adduced by them. Another phrase with old topers is “shedding a tear,” also “wiping an eye.”