back to the wall | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)(Can weclean up(+)this sense?)A verydifficultsituationwith no beneficialoptionsavailable for action.1901,Frank Norris, chapter 8, inThe Octopus:From this place—so he told himself—had emanated that policy of extortion, oppression and injustice that little by little had shouldered the ranchers from their rights, till, theirbacks to the wall, exasperated and despairing they had turned and fought and died.1910,Edith Wharton, “The Legend”, inTales of Men and Ghosts:Bernald felt that his extreme docility in such matters was proportioned to the force of resistance which, for nearly half a life-time, had kept him, with hisback to the wall, fighting alone against the powers of darkness.2006January 14,Bobby Ghosh, “Why Iran Won't Back Down”, inTime:Hisback to the wall, Ahmedinajad resorted to the tactic favored by cornered politicians everywhere: distract attention from yourself by pointing to a bogeyman.2016May 22, Phil McNulty, “Crystal Palace 1-2 Manchester United”, inBBC‎[1]:The England international may not have been at his best but it was his intervention when United had theirbacks to the walland trailed that dragged them back into a cup final they were in danger of losing.

Examples:

EN: There he was, hands up, back to the wall, millions of cops around two seconds later there were two corpses and he'd beat it!
ES: Ahí estaba él, con las manos arriba, contra la pared, miles de policías alrededor ¡dos segundos más tarde había dos cadáveres y él se había largado!
EN: There's life for you, life with its back to the wall.
ES: Ahí está la vida, con todos sus problemas.
EN: You know, Ed, I figured that where we came from we were born with our back to the wall and nothing more could happen to us and nobody could hurt us.
ES: Sabes, Ed, creí que de donde veníamos nosotros nacimos con la espalda contra la pared y nada más podría pasarnos y nadie nos podría lastimar.
EN: It seems you have my back to the wall.
ES: Al parecer, usted me tiene contra la pared.
EN: You'll see. This time next year, we'll have our back to the wall, and who's to blame?
ES: Pero lo vamos a lamentar.
EN: Put them all back to the wall.
ES: Poned eso ahí.
EN: I will put the his back to the wall.
ES: Póngalo de espaldas contra la pared, señor juez.
EN: She could stand if she keeps her back to the wall.
ES: Puede levantarse y estar contra la pared.
EN: I can't dance and keep my back to the wall, anyway.
ES: No puedo bailar y estar contra una pared.
EN: I raced back to the wall map to fix its location in my mind... then got started on that last lap to fame and fortune.
ES: Corrí de vuelta al mapa en la pared para memorizar su situación, después comencé el último tramo hacia la fama y la fortuna.
EN: Now, come my points floats, light as the foam ready to drive you back to the wall, and then as I end the refrain, thrust home.
ES: doblan por ti su canción. y al finalizar...¡te hiero!
EN: Everybody gets his back to the wall
ES: ♪ A todos nos toca ponernos contra la pared
EN: You men get back to the wall.
ES: Todos los hombres regresen al muro.
EN: Get back to the wall!
ES: ¡A la pared!
EN: The mother country has her back to the wall, and you're carousing.
ES: La madre patria tiene su espalda contra la pared, y usted está de juerga.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).