Meaning of coffin corner | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The position in a formation of ships or bombers that is most exposed to enemy fire.
2. A situation in which the aircraft cannot increase or decrease its airspeed without stalling or buffeting.
3. A corner of the field formed by the opponent's goal line and a sideline, into which a punt is often aimed in order to force the opposition to play close to their goal line.
4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see coffin, corner.

Examples

“We'd though that because of the TNT we might be somewhere in the middle. But we got the rear corner on the starboard side. They call that the coffin corner.”

“Suddenly we spotted her coming directly for the Spencer, since the Spencer was the last ship in the column next to the sun ('coffin corner,' it is called.)”

“Forgetting he was an officer, I shot back, "Friend, you didn't draw coffin corner because of me, I drew it because of you!"”

“However, most survivors remembered it as positioned in "coffin corner", where it was especially vulnerable to attack from the air or by submarine, thus the name.”

“He had been rostered in the safest position—high element number three—but now when he came to take off he was back in low number two—”coffin corner.””

“Also, at a briefing that morning, we learned much to our dismay that once again our squadron's position in the formation was to be at the tail end of the lower left echelon, the infamous “coffin corner."”

“Each time we had a flight, we were assigned a different spot in the formation. Our crew members knew that, eventually, we would be assigned the “coffin corner.””

“Here, in fact, is the so-called “coffin corner,” with the pilot juggling the throttle betwixt buffeting and highspeed stalling.”

“The U-2 had to fly in the “coffin corner” of its flight envelope, one knot from stalling, one knot from overstressing the airframe, and one SA-2 from an international incident.”

“Coffin corner continues to trap the unwary, as witness the losses of Air France 447 over the Atlantic in 2009 and Air Asia 8501 over the Java Sea in 2014.”

“During that second half, Carideo, one of Notre Dame's greatest punters, repeatedly kept SMU bottled up deep in its own territory on “coffin-corner” punts which invariably went out of bounds inside the Mustangs' 10-yard line.”

“Kick it hard, kick it deep, and aim for the coffin corner when close enough to the opponents' end zone.”

“His ability to find the coffin corner pinned countless opponents deep in their own zone, and even when he didn’t have the big numbers that some other CFL punters did, he was always considered to be one of the very best directional punters in the league.”

“During his career, Higgins punted 135 times for an average of 43.5 yards, with 40 in the "coffin corner".”

“Last of all she paints the little dog with his leg cocked over the coffin corner.”

CEFR level