life and limb
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
At risk of serious injury or death
Literally: body parts essential for survival
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
This meant I didn't have to get risk life and limb to get a good close up shot.
The Cook Report, in which the reporter Roger Cook risks life and limb to investigate fraudsters, won the ITV Programme of the Year class.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “life and limb” mean?
At risk of serious injury or death Literally: body parts essential for survival
Is “life and limb” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.