dernier ressort

One last word—arsenic is the dernier ressort, and should not be used until other means have failed, whereas some people fly to it when a much simpler treatment would have done all that was necessary.

Resort′er, a frequenter.—Last resort, the last means of relief, the final tribunal—the French dernier ressort.

"A desperate dernier ressort," I observed.

On another occasion, when Hook was very much worried for money, he went as a dernier ressort to a publisher who knew him, in the hope that he would help him; but unfortunately the man knew him “too well,” and refused, unless he had something to show that he would get his money’s worth, or at any rate a portion of it.

This is the last refuge of the Theist—the dernier ressort of the theologian.