force someone's back to the wall

English

Verb

force someone's back to the wall (third-person singular simple present forces someone's back to the wall, present participle forcing someone's back to the wall, simple past and past participle forced someone's back to the wall)

1. To put someone under a lot of pressure; to put someone in a very difficult situation.
   • 1947, Friends’ Intelligencer‎^[1], volume 104, page 366:

     You are forcing our backs to the wall, Mr. President. The time is not far off when, living for God’s reign on earth, we shall have to stand against you.

   • 1991, Stella Cameron, Snow Angels, →ISBN, page 35:

     He didn’t want to do it this way, but she’d forced his back to the wall.

   • 1998, Richard I. Mann, Plots & Schemes That Brought Down Soeharto, →ISBN, page 132:

     It was unlikely that “the masses” would respond to this, unless rising prices forced their backs to the wall – or unless they were incited!

   • 2000 March 21, Bonnie Brown, Canada, House of Commons Debates (Hansard), volume 136, number 68, page 4921:

     We did not do that because the opposition was forcing our backs to the wall. We did that because we want to govern well.

   • 2010, Terry Eagleton, On Evil, →ISBN, page 153:

     There are those who believe that the truth about the humanity emerges only when you subject people to extreme pressure. Force their backs to the wall, confront them (for example) in some room full of light with what terrifies them most in the world, and they will reveal themselves for what they are. But this is palpably untrue.