to death

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to death

1. Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: See to (“used to indicate result of action”), death.
2. (degree, idiomatic, hyperbolic) To a great degree; to the greatest degree possible, to excess.
   • 1933, Choudhary Rahmat Ali et al., Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?:

     Are we to be crucified just to save the faces of our leaders or to bolster up the preposterous that India can be a single nation? Is it with a view to achieve a compromise at all costs, or is it to support the illusion that Hindu nationalism is working in the interests of Muslims as well as Hindus? Irony is flattered to death by a mental muddle of such a nature and on such a scale.

   • 1989 December 25, U.S. government Foreign Broadcast Information Service (translator), Transcript of the closed trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu (translated transcript of trial shown on Romanian and Austrian television),

     So far, they have always claimed that we have built this country, we have paid our debts, but with this they bled the country to death and have hoarded enough money to ensure their escape.

   • 2010 October 27, The Sydney Morning Herald, Howard says leader[s]hip row 'done to death' ,

     "I don't want to revisit his view and my view about whether I should have retired and who said what then," he told ABC Radio.

     "That's been done to death."

• (idiomatic): ad nauseam, to pieces

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