Expressões com a palavra DEATH

Today I'm gonna be talking about some expressions with the word death. It doesn't necessarily have to do with death itself, and therefore they don't have to be attached to a moment when someone has died. But when it comes to death, people tend to show different kinds of reactions to it. Some people are petrified by death, but some others believe it's just a part of living and therefore it should be seen as natural as possible. I particularly don't waste too much time thinking of that (I think that's the best way to deal with it by the way), but I would be lying If I said I don't fear it at all.

What makes us see life's value though? Generally when we're confronted by a very tough situation, we tend afterwards to be happy for simply being alive. It might be a paradox, but being at death's door opens up a whole new perspective towards life. To be at death's door means that you're very ill and close to death, which is a very unpleasant situation. Diseases are things that make us remember of how fragile we are and subject to death, so much that there are some expressions with the word death regarding to times of illness. If someone for instance looks like death warmed up, it means they look very ill indeed ('death warmed over' is the American form).

But as I said before, expressions related to death don't necessarily refer to it literally. If for instance you're just sick to death of someone telling you silly jokes, it means you just can't take it anymore. And speaking of jokes, you know those times when you hear a very funny joke for the first that cracks you up? Imagine that the same joke's been told over and over again and it stops being funny. In other words, the joke has been done to death, it's not funny anymore.

And finally, the idiom "matter of life and death". In Portuguese we would say "um assunto de vida ou morte", which means it is extremely important. Imagine you're in a meeting and suddenly someone comes up to you saying there's a phone call waiting for you in a different room. You on the other hand are very engaged with the meeting and say you'll return the call within some minutes. You don't know what's the call is about, but the person says you should call back immediately because it seemed to be a matter of life and death. Soon you find out your child's gone into hospital burning with high fever. It was definitely a matter of life and death.

Fonte: http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/search.php?p=0&q=death