go to the wall
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To risk everything or make a final effort
Literally: to go to a physical wall
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
With the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 60s, the NILP came under increasing pressure from the rival sectarian political camps.
Whilst Apple were undoubtedly the first to successfully market a desktop publishing system, it was Xerox who invented it, the business world tends to run on PC - type systems rather than Macintoshes.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “go to the wall” mean?
To risk everything or make a final effort Literally: to go to a physical wall
Is “go to the wall” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.