What does 'a death by thousand cuts' mean? [closed]
I learned this is an ancient technique of torture originating from imperial China. But nowadays a lot of articles and blogs use this proverbial expression. I want to know:
- What does it mean in a subtle way? I get that it has something to do with the slow creeping death of a system or so.
- Some examples in that context.
It should be understood that in modern English this is almost always used in a metaphorical sense, and hardly ever refers to a live person or animal.
Rather, the reference is typically to a company or organization of some sort, a body of laws, a government, or perhaps a social group.
The implication is that the entity referred to did not meet its demise due to a small number of serious injuries, but rather to many small actions which slowly deprived the entity of its coherence, until it essentially disintegrated.
This proverb "The Death of a Thousand Cuts" is somewhat analogous to another - "The Straw that Broke The Camel's Back".
Both are used in relation to the cause of some undesirable situation. It means that the situation or problem was caused not by any single significant event, but the cumulative effect of lots of very minor events.
In the case of the Camel, it refers in particular to the most recent event which was the final event, immediately before the problem or situation happened - "The Last Straw".
The modern use of these proverbs have nothing to do with torture (or camels).
The term is often used to contrast with the idea that there is a particular, or a few particular, identifiable causes. Rather, there is a large number of events, each of which when viewed on its own can't explain what happened. Each individual cause doesn't look like a cause for concern by itself, and fixing any one thing wouldn't have prevented it. It's only all of them together that explain it.