the.com/last straw
The small annoyance that files the paperwork for every grievance before it.
means The final, usually minor, incident in a series that causes someone to finally lose patience or give up after tolerating everything before it.
from Short for 'the straw that broke the camel's back' — the image of a camel loaded past any sane limit, which collapses when one last, weightless straw is added. The proverb (and this shortened form of it) existed in English by the 1800s, though versions of the overloaded-animal idea go back further; earlier English even had 'the last feather that breaks the horse's back' before the camel version won out.
- origin
- from 'the straw that broke the camel's back'
- math
- it never weighs more than the first straw
- real trigger
- the other 99 straws, unpaid
- timing
- always arrives disguised as something trivial