Chrysti The Wordsmith: The Last Straw

Good day and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. The expression the last straw is an idiomatic way of indicating the final off an insignificant event that makes a bad situation simply unbearable. The last straw is a truncation of the complete phrase. It's the last straw which breaks the camel's back suggesting that even though a camel can manage massive loads the beast will finally collapse under a straw's weight too much. This proverb has analogues in several languages. Sixteenth century Spanish speakers said a chord may be finally broken by the feeblest of poles. An older English version of the adage was it's the last feather that breaks the horse's back. Charles Dickens may be responsible for fashioning the camel proverb into its familiar modern English form in his 1848 novel Dombey and Son Dickens wrote the last straw breaks the laden camel's back. Another literary example comes from the 1936 novel Gone With The Wind where Margaret Mitchell wrote this of

Scarlett O'Hara's widowhood. She behaved as she had behaved before her marriage. She went to parties flirted did everything she had done as a girl except stop wearing mourning. This she knew would be a straw that would break the backs of pitty pat and Melanie and up to the minute context. The last straw is the rather cutesy name of a web journal of straw bale construction techniques. I'm Christie the wordsmith. Good day were lovers. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.