drive a stake through its heart

Meaning: (idiomatic)get rid of, destroy permanently or stop talking about1984, Peter Benjaminson,Death in the Afternoon: America's Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival, Andrews, McMeel & Parker,→ISBN:The Chandlers also were interested in retaining the family fortune, not squandering it, and theMirror-Newswas losing $2 million a year. If, the Chandlers thought, they could kill theMirror-Newsanddrive a stake through its heart, they would be much better off.1999, Fred Siegel,Urban Society, McGraw-Hill Higher Education,→ISBN,page125:"You can't reform ODOT," he says wearily, "you can onlydrive a stake through its heart."2000, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations,Final Review of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Treaty Doc. 105-28): Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Sixth Congress, First Session, October 7, 1999, Volume 4, U.S. Government Printing Office,page28:We hear great debate about how this is a bad treaty and we should defeat it anddrive a stake through its heart, but what, then, should we do?2011, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means,Impediments to Job Creation: Hearing Before the Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, First Session, March 30, 2011, U.S. Government Printing Office,→ISBN,page116:We can't tinker with this tax code monstrosity or try to reform around the edges. The only thing we can do with this hideous beast is kill it,drive a stake through its heart, bury it, and hope that it never rises again to terrorize the American people.

Examples:

EN: Our only chance of saving Miss Mina's life is to find the hiding place of Dracula's living corpse and to drive a stake through its heart.
ES: La única forma en que podemos salvarle la vida a Mina... es hallar el lugar donde reposa el cadáver viviente de Drácula... y atravesarle el corazón con una estaca.
ID: Satu-satunya cara untuk menyelamatkan Mina adalah menemukan peti mayat Dracula dan menancapkan kayu pada jantungnya.
EN: I don't know whether to congratulate you or drive a stake through its heart.
ES: No se si felicitarte o clavarle una estaca en el corazón.
EN: It's well-known- to kill a vampire... you must drive a stake through its heart or shoot it with a golden bullet.
ES: Es bien sabido que para matar a un vampiro ... se le debe clavar una estaca en el corazón o disparar con una bala de oro.
EN: You need to drive a stake through its heart.
ES: Necesitas introducir una estaca en su corazón.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).