where does the saying "dead as a door nail" come from, What is a door nail? and how could it be dead?

Answer 1

It's not about a special type of nail, but about the fact that when a nail was used on a door it had to be driven all the way through and BENT on the other side to keep it from working its way out during all the opening and closing of the door (as well as from being stolen).

Since until the 19th century metal nails had to be hand-tooled and were thus relatively expensive, carpenters tried to remove and re-use them when the building was torn down or renovated. But this was not possible with doornails. Bending them made them "dead", no longer usable.

http://www.idiomsite.com/deadasa.htm
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/10/messages/14.html


One of my favorite passages in Dickens is at the beginning of A Christmas Carol, and depends on this expression (best read out loud... my kids think it's a hoot!):

"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

http://www.stormfax.com/1dickens.htm

Answer 2

This is an ancient expression: we have a reference to this dating back to 1350, and it also appears in the fourteenth-century work The Vision of Piers Plowman and in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Another expression, of rather later date, is as dead as a herring, because most people only saw herrings when they were long dead and preserved; there are other similes with the same meaning, such as dead as mutton, or dead as a stone.

A door nail is the metal plate inserted into a door beneath a door knocker.

Answer 3

Door nails were used to fasten windows and doors during storms and hurricanes. They were also used on coffins--thus the term: dead as a door nail. Nothing came out and nothing got inside: neither wind or spirits.

Answer 4

i have never thought of it like that. good question and i have no idea! sorry!