to imply that someone will expend his or her utmost effort in support of a person, idea, system, etc., usually in a manner that will preserve the status quo, as in “I can’t let them change our PowerPoint template, I’ll fight on the beaches for it”; originates in a rather frivolous appropriation of the defining phrase from Winston Churchill’s historic wartime speech, in which he declaimed Britain’s resolve to defend itself no matter the cost; like other examples of business jargon, when shorn of context and pressed into mundane service the phrase loses a bit of its grandeur1
- In a similar vein, the casual use of the jargon “drink the Kool-Aid” belies its truly macabre origins in the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which several hundred people died as part of a cult suicide; the phrase’s somber heritage has been almost completely forgotten in modern usage ↩