"buy the farm" meaning in English

See buy the farm in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-buy the farm.ogg [Australia] Forms: buys the farm [present, singular, third-person], buying the farm [participle, present], bought the farm [participle, past], bought the farm [past]
Etymology: Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use. Etymology templates: {{l|en|metaphor}} metaphor Head templates: {{en-verb|buy<,,bought> the farm}} buy the farm (third-person singular simple present buys the farm, present participle buying the farm, simple past and past participle bought the farm)
  1. (idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash. Tags: US, euphemistic, idiomatic, informal Categories (topical): Death Synonyms: buy it, buy the plot, buy the ranch, kick the bucket, punch one's ticket, meet your maker Related terms: bet the farm Translations (to die): tage billetten (Danish), potkaista tyhjää (Finnish), passer l’arme à gauche [informal] (French), casser sa pipe [informal] (French), avaler son extrait de naissance [informal] (French), calancher [colloquial] (French), passer de vie à trépas [formal] (French), crever [derogatory] (French), canner [derogatory] (French), den Löffel abgeben (German), skride hen til de evige jaktmarker (Norwegian), bater as botas (Portuguese)
    Sense id: en-buy_the_farm-en-verb-hKnvdJlS Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English euphemisms, English predicates, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for buy the farm meaning in English (5.4kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use.",
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        {
          "ref": "1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, page 131",
          "text": "You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an \"incident\" as if you buy it in a declared war.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, G. Harry Stine, Manna, page 221",
          "text": "Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, page 212",
          "text": "BETTY. Shoot, if I knew you was gonna buy the farm I coulda asked for everything you got in the world... How were you gonna do it? ¶ROGER (takes revolver out of briefcase). With this.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, page 171",
          "text": "They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash."
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      "id": "en-buy_the_farm-en-verb-hKnvdJlS",
      "links": [
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          "die",
          "die"
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        [
          "battle",
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          "plane",
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        [
          "crash",
          "crash"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "bet the farm"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "buy it"
        },
        {
          "word": "buy the plot"
        },
        {
          "word": "buy the ranch"
        },
        {
          "word": "kick the bucket"
        },
        {
          "word": "punch one's ticket"
        },
        {
          "word": "meet your maker"
        }
      ],
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "da",
          "lang": "Danish",
          "sense": "to die",
          "word": "tage billetten"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to die",
          "word": "potkaista tyhjää"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "informal"
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          "word": "passer l’arme à gauche"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "informal"
          ],
          "word": "casser sa pipe"
        },
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          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "informal"
          ],
          "word": "avaler son extrait de naissance"
        },
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          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "colloquial"
          ],
          "word": "calancher"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "formal"
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          "word": "passer de vie à trépas"
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          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
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          "word": "crever"
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          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to die",
          "tags": [
            "derogatory"
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          "word": "canner"
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        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "to die",
          "word": "den Löffel abgeben"
        },
        {
          "code": "no",
          "lang": "Norwegian",
          "sense": "to die",
          "word": "skride hen til de evige jaktmarker"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "to die",
          "word": "bater as botas"
        }
      ]
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      "tags": [
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      "word": "bet the farm"
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        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, G. Harry Stine, Manna, page 221",
          "text": "Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!",
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          "ref": "1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, page 212",
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, page 171",
          "text": "They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow.",
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        "To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash."
      ],
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        "(idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash."
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "buy it"
    },
    {
      "word": "buy the plot"
    },
    {
      "word": "buy the ranch"
    },
    {
      "word": "kick the bucket"
    },
    {
      "word": "punch one's ticket"
    },
    {
      "word": "meet your maker"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "da",
      "lang": "Danish",
      "sense": "to die",
      "word": "tage billetten"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to die",
      "word": "potkaista tyhjää"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "word": "passer l’arme à gauche"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "word": "casser sa pipe"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "word": "avaler son extrait de naissance"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ],
      "word": "calancher"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "formal"
      ],
      "word": "passer de vie à trépas"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ],
      "word": "crever"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to die",
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ],
      "word": "canner"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "to die",
      "word": "den Löffel abgeben"
    },
    {
      "code": "no",
      "lang": "Norwegian",
      "sense": "to die",
      "word": "skride hen til de evige jaktmarker"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "to die",
      "word": "bater as botas"
    }
  ],
  "word": "buy the farm"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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