force someone's back to the wall

present singular third person forces someone's back to the wall · participle present forcing someone's back to the wall · participle past forced someone's back to the wall · past forced someone's back to the wall

1. To put someone under a lot of pressure; to put someone in a very difficult situation.

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

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

   4 more examples

   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.

   1947, Friends’ Intelligencer, volume 104, page 366

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

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

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

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

   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.

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