death’s door, at/near

Moribund, dangerously ill. Presumably this metaphor originated in the idea that death was a state of being one could enter, that is, an afterlife. It was used by Miles Coverdale (an early transla- tor of the Bible) in A Spyrytuall Pearle (1550), “To bring unto death’s door,” and was repeated by Shakespeare and eventually, in more secular context, by later writers. Eric Partridge deemed it a cliché by about 1850.