be-all and end-all, the

The ultimate purpose, the most important con- cern. An early and famous use of this term is in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1.6), in which the ambitious Macbeth soliloquizes about assassinating Duncan so as to become king: “. . . that but this blow [the murder] might be the be-all and the end-all here.” Eric Partridge held it was a cliché by the nineteenth century, but it is heard less often today.