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. 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.

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)

  1. (idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
    • 1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers‎[1], 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[2], 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[3], 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[4], →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

Translations

See also

References

  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
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