last resort

1. 1.

   an expedient adopted only in desperation

   “`pis aller' is French for `worst going'”

   Synonymspis aller

   Broaderexpedient

Questions about last resort

What does last resort mean?

last resort means "an expedient adopted only in desperation".

What is another word for last resort?

Close synonyms include pis aller. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is last resort a common word?

last resort is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.