Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a cigarette; occas. a cigar (see cit. 1945).

1888		in Texas Siftings 18 Feb. 8: A youth [...] puffed at an ill-smelling coffin nail.
1899		Dly Press (Newport News, VA) 13 July 7/2: The young man put the coffin nail between his lips.
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 28: coffin-nail or coffin-tack, n. A cigarette.
1905		Hartford Republican (KY) 6 Jan. 8/5: [headline] Japs Turn to Cigarette. Pipe is Being Rapidly Displaced by Coffin Nail.
1907		Bendigo Indep. (Vic.) 2 Apr. 3/2: [A]nd then came a weird, hair-raising display picturing [...] the evil effects of cigarette smoking. Cigarettes, ticked as ‘coffin nails,’ hung from a rafter, and below was a representation of a cemetary, cigarette boxes forming the head stones.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 289: Why, thankee, I’ve been aching for just a good old coffin-nail.
1910		Eve. Sun (Baltimore, MD) 8 June 6/7: The ‘Nail’ May Become More Popular [...] the present King smokes more cigarettes than cigars.
1914		B.T. Harvey ‘Addenda -The Northwest’ in DN IV:ii 162: coffin tack, n. A cigarette. Also coffin nail.
1918		Aussie (France) 6 Aug. 13/2: And, lo, he smoketh his master’s cigarettes and recks not of the tribulation to come and sometimes he cometh a gutzer. For his master counteth the coffin screws and they are short in the count.
1923		Courier (Waterloo, IA) 26 Dec. 6/4: Stop fooling with that coffin tack.
1928		M. Bodenheim Georgie May 107: These coffin-nails taste lak shugah—give me Home-runs ev’y time.
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 248: Leave the cigarettes alone for a minute. It takes wind to win a football game, and you don’t get wind eating them coffin nails!
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 23/2: Coffin nail, a cigar Coffin tack, a cigarette.
1940		R. Service ‘The Ballad of Salvation Bill’ in Bar Room Ballads (1978) 602: Now there was I, a husky guy, whose god was Nicotine. / With a ‘coffin-nail’ a fixture of my mug.
1945		J. Archibald ‘Smoke Scream’ in 10-Story Detective Feb. 🌐 They sit down by the corpse and puff at the coffin spikes and [...] run the stogies along under their bugles to get the aroma.
1946		Sun. Post 26 May 6/2: Each fag a coffin nail they say, / I drive home twenty-five each day. / Tobacco is a noxious weed / But — I like it!
1951		C. Willingham ‘Guardian Angel’ in Gates of Hell (1966) 132: Give me another of those cigarettes [...] Or should I say ‘coffin tacks’?
1954		Mississippi Same ‘Nicotine Fit’ 🎵 Get outta here with your coffin nails / Can’t you see you’re on the wrong trail, / Go way, boy, don’t wanna see one lit / Or I’ll go into a nicotine fit.
1967		J. Burke Till Death Us Do Part 151: Your pipe tobacco is quite healthy, en it? Compared to them things he smokes. Coffin-nails, they are.
1974		D. Ireland Burn 80: I don’t smoke coffin nails, I’m a pipe man.
1982		(con. 1930s–50s) E. Mac Thomáis Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 96: Hey Mack, any fags, any weeds, any butts, any stabbers, any coffin nails?
1986		W.D. Ehrhart Passing Time (1988) 24: Might be a lot easier if you got rid of those coffin nails.
1998		J. O’Connor Salesman 44: ‘Fierce, the old coffin nails,’ he said, taking a light from Seánie.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 coffin nails n. cigarettes – known to schoolboys to cause deaths long before it was popularly accepted [...] Coffin Nails was a term used in the song by Sheila Hancock: ‘Tobacco, tobacco I hate you I do / Like Venus I’d look if it wasn’t for you / [...] / Oh nail in my coffin so pale and so thin / I am a fool to keep knocking you in / But I’ll give up the habit I will even yet....... / When I’ve had just one more cigarette’.
2013		F. Bill Donnybrook [ebook] Angus flipped his coffin nail onto the cracked pavement.
2015		Eve. Standard (London) 7 Jan. 36/1: May I suggest you make it your new year resolution to get off the coffin nails?
2022		Twitter 23 Dec. 🌐 I not a smoker, but I love the occasional nail.

2. (US campus) one who smokes to excess.

1915

R. Bolwell ‘College Sl. Words And Phrases’ in DN IV:iii 232: coffin-nail, n. [...] A cigarette ‘fiend’; one who smokes too much.