At each other’s throats

This expression from the 16th century conjures up a picture of two adversaries trying to strangle one another and that indeed is its literal meaning. Mercifully and mostly, the expression is used metaphorically these days. Shakespeare, true to its literal meaning, gives us a good example of it in Coriolanus (c.1608) Act IV, Scene V, “Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throats.”