Straw that broke the camel's back

The idiom the straw that broke the camel's back is from an Arabic proverb about how a camel is loaded beyond its capacity to move or stand.^[1] This is a reference to any process by which cataclysmic failure (a broken back) is achieved by a seemingly inconsequential addition, a single straw. This also gives rise to thephrase "the last/final straw", used when something is deemed to be the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences. Variations include "the straw that broke thedonkey's back", the "melon that broke the monkey's back", the "feather that broke the camel's back", and the "straw that broke the horse's back".

One of the earliest published usages of this phrase was in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son (1848), where he says "As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back", meaning that there is a limit to everyone's endurance, or everyone has his breaking-point. Dickens was writing in the nineteenth century and he may have received his inspiration from an earlier proverb, recorded by Thomas Fuller in hisGnomologia: Adages and Proverbs as "'Tis the last feather that breaks the horse's back". Mark Twain also used a variation of this phrase in his book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), "this final feather broke the camel's back"