buy the farm
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
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.
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
buy the farm (third-person singular simple present buys the farm, present participle buying the farm, simple past and past participle bought the farm)
- (idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
- 1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, page 131:
- You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as if you buy it in a declared war.
- 1984, G. Harry Stine, Manna, page 221:
- Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!
- 1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, →ISBN, page 212:
- 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.
- 2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, →ISBN, page 171:
- They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow.
Usage notes
- This idiom is most often found in its past tense and past participle form bought the farm.
Synonyms
- buy it
- buy the plot
- buy the ranch
- kick the bucket
- punch one's ticket
- meet your maker
- See also Thesaurus:die
Translations
to die
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See also
References
- Michael Quinion (2004) “Buy the farm”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.
- http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-buy1.htm
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
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