by hook or by crook

Example: “By hook or by crook, I'm getting tickets to that final.”

Origin: The story most often attached to this is impossible. It claims the phrase refers to Hook Head and the village of Crooke near Waterford, and to a declaration by Cromwell that he would take the city by Hook or by Crooke — but the expression is recorded in English around 1380, in the writings of John Wycliffe, roughly 270 years before Cromwell was anywhere near Ireland. The likelier explanation involves medieval forest rights: commoners were permitted to gather firewood from woodland they did not own, but only what could be pulled down using a billhook or a shepherd's crook, with cutting live timber forbidden. Under that reading the phrase originally described the outer limit of what was permissible, which is not quite what it means now.