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My colleague was screaming You are stupid to the last drop at another colleague who accidentally formatted her hard disk.

Is there such an expression as stupid to the last drop? Are there differences between stupid to the last drop and stupid?

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I suggest 'stupid as a bag of hair/hammers/rocks'. These are all well-received expressions meaning "dumber'n just plain stupid". 'stupid to the last drop' is just being clever and is not an idiom. – Mitch Dec 22 '11 at 14:50

2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Maxwell House, a well-known if not well-respected brand of coffee in the US, has (had?) a famous slogan that eventually entered the wider lexicon: Good to the last drop.

While that phrase can be heard in various contexts, I've rarely if ever heard the adjective good swapped out for another, nor am I familiar with the phrase being used without any liquid reference point. (That's not to say that the liquid in question is always coffee -- plenty of oral sex jokes also make use of the slogan.)

Your colleague was intending to humorously intensify the adjective by saying to the last drop, but I wouldn't call that standard usage.

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Oh I see, so my colleague was humorously angrily shouting at my other colleague for formatting her hard disk. - That's interesting +1 – Larry Morries Dec 22 '11 at 9:19
OMG, I've been drinking coffee of ill repute! :-) – DeepYellow Dec 22 '11 at 10:50
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@DeepYellow I'm a Nescafe addict myself; I don't speak as a coffee snob, but rather as someone who's been scolded by coffee snobs. ^_^ – onomatomaniak Dec 22 '11 at 11:11
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Not unlike the phrase, "from zero to stupid in 60 words." Taking a common trope and interposing pejoratives to play off established cultural memes is an emergent genre. – The Raven Dec 22 '11 at 14:56
+1 for onomatomaniak - I like your sentence scolded by coffee snobs. ^_^ – Larry Morries Dec 23 '11 at 0:27
up vote 1 down vote

It's quite easy to guess what is the difference- to the last drop put a stress on the durability and means like stubbornly doing something stupid all over again.

Aka People are polluting nature but they are being stupid to the last drop.

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+1 Nice one - put a stress on the durability and means like stubbornly doing something stupid all over again. I was wondering if my colleague would say next time, probably stupid to the core?? – Larry Morries Dec 23 '11 at 0:30

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