Dictionary

buy the farm en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

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. Still another links it to a sardonic attitude of farmers that farms are often so heavily mortgaged and farmers' finances so difficult that one could not finish buying one's farm until one was dead.

Meanings

1. (US, euphemistic, idiomatic, informal) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
   • 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. 1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, →ISBN, page 212:
   • Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway! 1984, G. Harry Stine, Manna, page 221:
   • You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as if you buy it in a declared war. 1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, page 131:
   • They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow. 2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, →ISBN, page 171:

Forms

Relateds

bet the farm

Synonyms

buy the ranch · buy the big one · buy it · punch one's ticket · buy the plot · kick the bucket · meet your maker

Translations (13)

fr crever (to die) · fr calancher (to die) · da tage billetten (to die) · de den Löffel abgeben (to die) · pt bater as botas (to die) · no skride hen til de evige jaktmarker (to die) · fr canner (to die) · pl kopnąć w kalendarz (to die) · fr avaler son extrait de naissance (to die) · fi potkaista tyhjää (to die) · fr passer de vie à trépas (to die) · fr passer l'arme à gauche (to die) · fr casser sa pipe (to die)