French intellectuals of a certain period made à la limite into a widespread idiom (or verbal tic) meaning, not just “borderline” or “in a pinch” as dictionaries say, but the taking of an argument to some sort of paroxystic or naked extreme. Random examples: from Philippe Sollers, Vérité de Barthes,

Myth is everywhere, it irradiates everything; in the limit, it talks to itself alone in our heads.

Or Jacques Andrieu, Psychologie de Mao Tsé-toung,

One can even say, in the limit, that only non-specialists can manage specialists.