The final stroke(s) that ensure completion or perfection. The term is derived from painting, that is, the last stroke of the artist’s brush, and was soon transferred to any creative effort, ranging from cake-baking to assembling a costume. Its earliest appearance in print dates from the mid-eighteenth century, and Eric Partridge concluded it became a cliché within a hundred years.

From the beginning to the end; the whole thing. The analogy to a complete meal of numerous courses dates back many years. John Heywood’s proverb collection of 1546 has it “from potage to cheese,” and John Clarke’s 1639 collection, “from th’egges to th’apples.” The precise locution of soup to nuts appears to be American and dates only from the early twentieth century. A very similar cliché, from start to finish, comes from sports, particularly rowing races. The earliest example in print, according to the OED, dates from a sports publication of 1868. This cliché is more common in Britain, where finish is used as a noun more often than it is in America. See also alpha and omega; from the word go.

Present at the end, usually meaning at someone’s ruin, but sometimes only at the climax of an important event. The term comes from fox hunting, where, in the eighteenth century, it denoted the presence of hunters and hounds at the killing of a fox they had run to ground. By 1800 the term was being transferred to other kinds of demise.