What is a door nail (dead as a door nail)?

Answer 1

I'm not really sure why you would differentiate, because I have never seen a live nail of any kind.

I guess, historically speaking, they did use wood pegs instead of nails at one time, so they could have been considered living, before being used as a peg in place of a nail.

Answer 2

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dea1.htm

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.

But why particularly a doornail, rather than just any old nail? Could it be because of the repetition of sounds, and the much better rhythm of the phrase compared with the version without door? Almost certainly the euphony has caused the phrase to survive longer than the alternatives I’ve quoted. But could there something special about a doornail?

The usual reason given is that a doornail was one of the heavy studded nails on the outside of a medieval door, or possibly that the phrase refers to the particularly big one on which the knocker rested. A doornail, because of its size and probable antiquity, would seem dead enough for any proverb; the one on which the knocker sat might be thought particularly dead because of the number of times it had been knocked on the head.

But William and Mary Morris, in The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, quote a correspondent who points out that it could come from a standard term in carpentry. If you hammer a nail through a piece of timber and then flatten the end over on the inside so it can’t be removed again (a technique called clinching), the nail is said to be dead, because you can’t use it again. Doornails would very probably have been subjected to this treatment to give extra strength in the years before screws were available. So they were dead because they’d been clinched. It sounds plausible, but whether it’s right or not we will probably never know.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2006.

Answer 3

The usual reason given is that a doornail was one of the heavy studded nails on the outside of a medieval door, or possibly that the phrase refers to the particularly big one on which the knocker rested. A doornail, because of its size and probable antiquity, would seem dead enough for any proverb; the one on which the knocker sat might be thought particularly dead because of the number of times it had been knocked on the head.

But William and Mary Morris, in The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, quote a correspondent who points out that it could come from a standard term in carpentry. If you hammer a nail through a piece of timber and then flatten the end over on the inside so it can’t be removed again (a technique called clinching), the nail is said to be dead, because you can’t use it again. Doornails would very probably have been subjected to this treatment to give extra strength in the years before screws were available. So they were dead because they’d been clinched. It sounds plausible, but whether it’s right or not we will probably never know.

Answer 4

the same old reason given is that a doornail became between the heavy studded nails on the exterior of a medieval door, or probable that the word refers back to the really large one on which the knocker rested. A doornail, because of its length and likely antiquity, would look useless adequate for any proverb; the single on which the knocker sat may be concept really useless using type of circumstances it were knocked on the right. yet William and Mary Morris, in the Morris Dictionary of note and word Origins, quote a correspondent who factors out that it ought to come from a common time period in carpentry. in case you hammer a nail by using somewhat of timber and then flatten the right over on the interior so it ought to’t be bumped off back (a approach referred to as clinching), the nail is declared to be useless, because you could’t use it back. Doornails would very probable were subjected to this remedy to provide more desirable potential in the years before screws were accessible. so that they were useless because they’d been clinched. It sounds accessible, yet no matter if it’s precise or no longer we can probable under no circumstances understand.

Answer 5

I KNOW this one! When a nail is put into the jam of the door and then bent, when you twist the nail, you can "lock" the door. The nail that is twisted to be used as the "lock" is the DEAD nail.

Answer 6

Uh....it's VERY complicated...it's a nail used in a door.

Answer 7

Dead - devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals). Finished with - unusable (when applied to inanimate objects).

Answer 8

what u hang a coat on if u haven't a hook on the door

Answer 9

never heard that term before

Answer 10

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dea1.htm