buy the farm

== 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 === === 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. ==== 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 buy the big one kick the bucket punch one's ticket meet your maker See also Thesaurus:die ==== Translations ==== ==== See also ==== bet the farm === 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