churchyard cough

English

Suggesting that the afflicted person will soon pass away and be buried.

churchyard cough (plural churchyard coughs)

(informal, medicine) A severe cough. (condition that causes one to cough, tendency to cough)
- 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 186:
  He was roused from his brief rest by a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to shake the whole system. It was one which in England is so simply, yet so emphatically, denominated a churchyard cough. It was hollow, like the echo of the grave.

a severe cough