Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Doornail |
DoornailNoun1. A nail with a large head; formerly used to decorate doors. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "doornail" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1885. (references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Death | Adjective: dead, lifeless; deceased, demised, departed, defunct, extinct; late, gone, no more; exanimate, inanimate; out of the world, taken off, released; departed this life. Verb: dead and gone; dead as a doornail, dead as a doorpost, dead as a mutton, dead as a herring, dead as nits; launched into eternity, gone to one's eternal reward, gone to meet one's maker, pushing up daisies, gathered to one's fathers, numbered with the dead. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I heard Dick Rivers caught the two of you bowled up and going at it in the same room with poor Miss Ogletree dead as a doornail laid out on a gurney. (Sling Blade; writing credit: Charles Chaplin) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Doornail" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Doornail" is used about 6 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 6 | 143,867 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "doornail": as dead as a doornail ♦ be dead as a doornail. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
as dead doornail | 16 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "doornail"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||
Albanian | gozhdë me kokë të madhe. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Czech | být nadobro mrtvý (be dead as a doornail). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Farsi | میخ سرگنده , گل میخ (Hobnail, Nail, Spile, Stud). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | ajtóveretszeg, ajtószeg. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | oornailday muerto (casualty, dead, dead man, deceased, died, dull, dummy, expired, fatality, late, lifeless, lost, quiescent). (various references) ตะปูที่ใช้ตรึงประตูให้อยู่กับที่. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "doornail": doornails. (additional references) | |
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"Doornail" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Demornay, Dhomnaill, Dobrnja, Dormael, dornail, Dounray, duorail, Durendal, Tofranil. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "doornail" (pronounced dô"rnā'l) |
| 3 | -n ā' l | Biennale, fingernail, hobnail, thumbnail, toenail. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-i-l-n-o-o-r" | |
-1 letter: lardoon, ordinal. | |
-2 letters: aldrin, indoor, inroad, ladino, ladron, lardon, oorali, ordain. | |
-3 letters: adorn, aloin, aroid, danio, dinar, dolor, donor, drail, drain, drool, indol, laird, liard, lidar, loran, nadir, nidal, nodal, noria, radio, radon, ranid, rondo. | |
-4 letters: airn, anil, arid, aril, darn, dial, diol, dirl, dona, door, idol, inro, iron, laid, lain, lair, land, lard. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-i-l-n-o-o-r" | |
+1 letter: doornails. | |
+3 letters: crocodilian, defloration, nonrailroad, overloading, periodontal, roadholding. | |
+4 letters: admonitorily, conductorial, consolidator, coordinately, crocodilians, deflorations, dishonorable, dishonorably, distortional, fluoridation, furazolidone, noneditorial, nonsteroidal, productional, roadblocking, roadholdings. | |
+5 letters: aldosteronism, consolidators, deformational, dendrological, devolutionary, discoloration, fluoridations, foolhardiness, furazolidones, hydroxylation, metronidazole, mitochondrial, periodontally, reconsolidate, waterflooding. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)44 6F 6F 72 6E 61 69 6C |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-.. --- --- .-. -. .- .. .-.. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000100 01101111 01101111 01110010 01101110 01100001 01101001 01101100 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)D o o r n a i l |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0044 006F 006F 0072 006E 0061 0069 006C |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)3881818480677578 |
| 1. Definition 2. Usage: Modern 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Usage Frequency | 5. Expressions 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Derivations | 9. Rhymes 10. Anagrams 11. Orthography 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
