down to the wire

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Idioms and Phrases

To the last minute; to the very end. For example, We're just about down to the wire with this project . This term comes from horseracing, where it was long the practice to stretch a wire across and above the track at the finish line. It was extended to figurative use about 1900.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

But with just five points separating Newcastle and Chelsea in seventh - a gap that could be cut to two if the Blues win at Fulham on Sunday - the top-five race looks set to go down to the wire.

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For the Clippers to become the fifth seed in the competitive Western Conference and avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament, they had to win their last two games of the regular-season, at Sacramento and Golden State, respectively, and both games came down to the wire.

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Aliya told the BBC it was something she first did for herself: "After I was finished with my costume I would rip it apart, literally down to the wire, and figure out how to make this into something else to wear outside of carnival."

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YouTube TV subscribers braced for the loss of popular programming as negotiations for a new distribution contract went down to the wire.

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Paramount began warning CBS, BET and Comedy Central viewers that a blackout was likely as negotiations went down to the wire with executives who run YouTube TV.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

down to the ground downtown

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