Why Do We Say “Over My Dead Body”?

If someone says that something will happen “over their dead body,” then it’s absolutely not going to happen, under any circumstances ... or at least not until the person in question has given up all conceivable opposition.

It’s a familiar expression of total defiance and resistance—but taken in literal terms, over my dead body is a surprisingly brutal turn of phrase to drop into casual conversation. So where does such a grisly expression come from?

The Origins of Over My Dead Body
From Literal to Figurative
A Phrase That Gets Around

The Origins of Over My Dead Body

Given the imagery involved, it might be tempting to presume over my dead body is a modern invention—but in fact, it dates back more than 200 years, to at least the late 18th century. The earliest record of over my dead body in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1796, when the phrase was used in the English romance tale Mansion House by the novelist James Norris Brewer (writing anonymously as “A Young Gentleman”):

“Edward forced his way to her, and rescued from the insolence of the soldiers, a very young, and extremely beautiful woman. She had fainted on discharge of the musquets, and on the door being forced open, her brother had flown to that which secured her room, determined, he said, they should enter it over his dead body.”

In this snippet from Brewer’s story, the gallant Edward is clearly determined to stop the musketeers from entering the room with everything he has, and this meaning—that someone was quite literally willing to die in their efforts to stop something from happening—was the phrase’s original implication. In fact, as an image of life-or-death defiance or resilience, over my dead body was a turn of phrase called upon by a number of 19th century writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“No, monster! First over my dead body thou shalt tread. I will not live to see the accursed deed!”) and the American novelist Jedediah Vincent Huntington (“I had to tell your mother … that a priest should never cross my threshold, for such a purpose, unless over my dead body”).

From Literal to Figurative

It would take almost another century before over my dead body became established enough in the lexicon to start to evolve into a less literal (but no less hyperbolic) use as a metaphor. In her memoir An American’s Christmas in Paris in 1871, for instance, the writer Celia Logan recalled how the concierge of her Paris apartment building was utterly determined to keep her bedroom warm in her absence:

“I loftily remarked to the concierge, ‘Do not let the fire go out upstairs.’ … ‘I’ll take care of that! Do you see that arm, that muscle? It won’t go out, except over my dead body!’ … He clenched his fist, and I walked away proudly … But what demonstrative people! How they get up their enthusiasm over trifles! The fire shouldn’t go out, except over his dead body! Why, a man going into battle could say no more than that.”

We can presume Logan’s building concierge wasn’t actually willing sacrifice his life for the cause of keeping a bedroom fire lit, so clearly he was using over my dead body as little more than a particularly vehement metaphor. But Logan’s reaction to it is telling, and perhaps shows just how extreme this might still have sounded to Victorian ears, a few decades before it fell into more general metaphorical use. Once it had become a little more established, however, over my dead body quickly found a place for itself in our language, and has remained a familiar (if thankfully not quite so literal) expression of resistance and resilience ever since.

A Phrase That Gets Around

According to Google ngram, usage of over my dead body has been steadily increasing since the mid-1990s. Here are a few places you might have seen it used.

In the title and lyrics of a song on Drake’s 2011 album Take Care featuring singer Chantal Kreviazuk
The title of a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1940
Jeffrey Archer’s 2021 novel Over My Dead Body
A true crime anthology podcast from Wondery
The 2023 black comedy Over My Dead Body directed by Ho Cheuk Tin

Learn More About Language: