wall

[kaz1234]

meaning of 'go to the wall'

[Donkey]

where i come from if i say im going to the wall it means im off to see Millwall play, but i doubt this is what you meant.. and just for the record i am in about two hours :-)

[Quizmonster]

'Go to the wall' has been a form of proverb since the 1500s, so obviously it must have been around for some time before even then. Here is one of the earliest references: "When brethren agree not in a house, goeth not the weakest to the walls?"

I take it that the basic idea there is that the strong hold the key, central part of the property whilst the weaker are displaced to the outer edges...ie the walls. Hence, we now use it to mean that one is defeated or - in business - forced into bankruptcy.

[Famous5]

Early churches and cathedrals rarely had seating in the nave for the laity. When the clergy presached long sermons, or when the mass lasted a long time the sick would find somewhere to lean - the only place being the wall, hence the saying the weakest go to the waal

[Addison]

In the middlea ages when churches had no pews the people stood. However there were cavities in the walls of the church and the old/infirm were asked to go to the wall. Something like that.

[Marsh]

Brewer (E. Cobham Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 1898) has:- To go to the wall. To be put on one side; to be shelved. This is in allusion to another phrase, �Laid by the wall��i.e. dead but not buried; put out of the way.

[Quizmonster]

It has been said of Brewer's work that it is:

"...if short on critical perspective, a rich enough resource to stand small but honourably in shadow beside the incomparable Oxford English Dictionary."

And that's the problem...he often disagrees with the OED. Wonderful chap, was Dr Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, but when his derivations are out of synch with those of the phalanx of scholars over a century-plus of OED development, there is little doubt as to whose we should accept. In dealing with the phrase 'go to the wall', the OED has nothing whatever to say about cathedrals or the unburied dead.