nail in one's coffin
Something that might hasten or contribute to one's death, as in Every cigarette you smoke is another nail in your coffin. This expression, alluding to fastening down a coffin lid, is today almost always used for a harmful habit such as tobacco use (giving rise to the slang term coffin nail for a cigar or cigarette). The idea was first expressed in an ode by Pindar (the pseudonym of John Wolcot) in 1792: “Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt.”
Added to drinking water at concentrations of around one part per million, fluoride ions stick to dental plaque.
In his view, a writer has only one duty: to be present in his books.
Yet this, in the end, is a book from which one emerges sad, gloomy, disenchanted, at least if we agree to take it seriously.
The fear of violence should not determine what one does or does not say.
The al Qaeda-linked gunmen shot back, but only managed to injure one officer before they were taken out.
Practise gliding in the form of inflection, or slide, from one extreme of pitch to another.Expressive Voice Culture|Jessie Eldridge Southwick
He alludes to it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce insensibility.
Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.Pearls of Thought|Maturin M. Ballou
Under the one-sixth they appear as slender, highly refractive fibers with double contour and, often, curled or split ends.A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis|James Campbell Todd