Straw that broke the camel's back
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The idiom the straw that broke the camel's back is from an Arab proverb about how a camel wearing shoes is loaded beyond its capacity to move[citation needed]. This is a reference to any process by which cataclysmic failure (a broken back) is achieved by a seemingly inconsequential addition (a single straw). This also gives rise to the phrase "the last/final straw", used when something is deemed to be the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences. Variations of this idiom include "the straw that broke the donkey's back", "melon that broke the monkey's back" and "final feather that broke the camel's back"[citation needed].
One of the earliest published usages of this phrase was in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son where he says "As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back", meaning that there is a limit to everyone's endurance, or everyone has his breaking point. Dickens was writing in the nineteenth century and he may have received his inspiration from an earlier proverb, recorded by Thomas Fuller in his Gnomologia as 'Tis the last feather that breaks the horse's back.'
