if/when push comes to shove
Definition
C2 If something can be done if push comes to shove, it can be done if the situation becomes so bad that you have to do it: If push comes to shove, we can always sell the car.Essential or necessary
(Definition of if/when push comes to shove from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
© Cambridge University Press)
Browse related topics
You are looking at an entry to do with Essential or necessary, but you might be interested in these topics from the Importance topic area:
- Being important and having importance
- Expressions meaning 'it isn't important to me'
- Importance - general words
- Important and essential things
- Important people and describing important people
- Irrelevant
- Of little or less importance
- People of little importance
- Things needed for a task
- Things of little importance
- Very important or urgent
Browse the Dictionary
Browse the Thesaurus
SMART Thesaurus
Synonyms and related words:
- a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do idiom
- basically adverb
- be a question of doing sth idiom
- call for sth phrasal verb
- dependence noun
- elemental adjective
- essential adjective
- essentially adverb
- indispensable adjective
- inherent adjective
- integral adjective
- interdependent adjective
- intrinsic adjective
- necessity noun
- need noun
- need verb (MUST DO)
- needed adjective
- on a need-to-know basis idiom
- stand or fall by sth idiom
- symbiosis noun
Topic:
Essential or necessary
Word of the Day
be under a cloud
to not be trusted or popular because people think you have done something bad
Blog
Read our blog about how the English language behaves.
New Words
Find words and meanings that have just started to be used in English, and let us know what you think of them.
