Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 14 August 2004

A Lexicographer writes

issue 14 August 2004

I’m sure I can’t remember hearing it used wrongly before, and now I’ve heard it twice in a fortnight from politicians. Perhaps they catch it from each other.

The phrase in question is in extremis and it has been used as if it meant ‘extremely’ or ‘in extreme circumstances’. In truth it means ‘on the point of death’, as the OED records.

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