when push comes to shove
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
when a situation becomes critical or urgent
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Khi tình huống trở nên quan trọng hoặc khẩn cấp
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: physical confrontation
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
When push came to shove, I stuck up for him.
When push has come to shove, his teams have simply not been good enough.
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 “when push comes to shove” mean?
when a situation becomes critical or urgent Literally: physical confrontation
Is “when push comes to shove” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.