Know Your English – The Hindu (June 13, 2016)
What is the meaning of ‘when push comes to shove’? (Sashi Kumar, Vellore).
This is an informal expression and it has more or less the same meaning as ‘if the worst comes to the worst’. Sometimes, we delay taking action of any kind; we wait till the last minute to actually do so. The situation becomes so bad that we are compelled to do what we should have done a long time ago. For further reading, visit “The Hindu”.