tooth and nail

1. 1.

   with force and ferocity

   “she fought tooth and nail”

Questions about tooth and nail

What does tooth and nail mean?

tooth and nail means "with force and ferocity".

Is tooth and nail a common word?

tooth and nail 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.