How can you be Deader than a doorknob?

Question

My wording is how the saying is said in the area in which I live.

Answer 1

As has been noted, the ORIGINAL expression is "dead as a doornail". I'm not surprised that a variation like "deader than a doorknob" would appear either because most people don't even know what exactly what a "doornail" is! and so, not surprisingly, they don't know what the original expression meant.

Thus the form YOU mention was likely the result of someone's changing the original either as a joke or out of ignorance (mis-hearing the original, or thinking it made no difference)

So the key question is still where DOES "dead as a doornail" come from?

Most nowadays only know the expression from the opening of Charles Dickens' story, "A Christmas Carol". But he clearly did *not* make it up -- as he specifically *tells* us in the passage another answer cited (with a humorous twist many seem to have missed). Note how he ends his defense of using this term, which he suggests does not make a lot of sense.

"But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for"

So, just when did our wise ancestors come up with it?

The older use goes back through Shakespeare (1590) to at least 1350 (see links below).

But WHY?

Apparently, it has nothing to do with characteristics of the nail itself, but is based on how the nail was USED. In the days before screws and rivets, such a thing as a door, heavy and always moving (so that nails were in danger of dislodging) would be secured by driving the nails all the way through the wood and then bending the protruding end of the nails back. Carpenters call this "clenching".

Now nails were rather expensive, so when you tore a place down, you would retrieve all the nails you could. But if you had clenched a nail it was no longer of any use-- it was "dead". And doornails were the main ones that fell in this category.

I list here a couple of articles that make basically the same point. But also take a look at the SITES they are on -- two EXCELLENT sites to visit when you have this kind of question about the origin of an expression. ("etymonline.com" is also very good, though it has less detail on longer expressions).

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/38250.html
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dea1.htm

Dictionary definition of "clench" (American Heritage listing, about half way down the page) -

"To fix or secure (a nail or bolt, for example) by bending down or flattening the pointed end that protrudes."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/clench

Answer 2

You could not turn when someone lays a hand on you.

And I have always heard it "deader than a doornail".

The simile "dead as a doornail" is from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, paragraphs two and three from Stave One. To wit:

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. 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 permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Answer 3

its not 'deader than a doorknob" its "dead AS a doorknob"

Answer 4

you cant be but it means as still as ...as much life as...i mean its a saying

Answer 5

because you are too stiff to even turn over...