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Meaning

the last minute, the eleventh hour

A point with no way back, where a final decision must be made. Describes a situation where one is completely cornered.

Example

土壇場で予約を取り消すことになり、店に平謝りした。

We had to cancel the reservation at the last minute and apologized profusely to the restaurant.

Origin

Originally an earthen platform built in the early modern period for carrying out beheadings, or the execution ground itself. From this it came to mean the final stage where one is cornered with no escape. The execution-ground sense appears in a hanashibon (book of humorous tales) from 1772, and the figurative sense in a novel from 1908.

Sources