eat someone's lunch
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Possibly from the idea of a stronger or quicker person snatching away and eating another person’s lunch before they can consume it.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈiːt ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/, /-ˈlʌnʃ/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈit ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/, /-ˈlʌnʃ/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -ʌntʃ
Verb
[edit]eat someone's lunch (third-person singular simple present eats someone's lunch, present participle eating someone's lunch, simple past ate someone's lunch, past participle eaten someone's lunch)
- (idiomatic, chiefly US, slang) To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of.
- Synonyms: eat someone for breakfast, have someone for breakfast; see also Thesaurus:defeat
- 2006 October 2, “A Disastrous ‘Upgrade’: My Boss Insisted that Creating a Windows Version of Our DOS App would Ensure Our Future”, in Steve Fox, editor, InfoWorld, volume 28, number 40, San Francisco, Calif.: InfoWorld Publishing Co., International Data Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 52, column 1:
- So in a classic it-ain't-broke-so-let's-fix-it-anyway move, some of our managers and salespeople began complaining that it wasn't written for Windows. […] If we didn't rewrite for Windows, they insisted, our competitors would eat our lunch!
- 2010 November 18, Kate Sheppard, “Outgoing GOPer Slams Climate Denying Colleagues”, in Mother Jones[1], San Francisco, Calif.: Foundation for National Progress, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-08-18:
- "I would also suggest to my free enterprise colleagues—especially conservatives here—whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey [i.e., climate change], what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don’t," the South Carolina Republican [Bob Inglis] said in his opening remarks. "And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century."
- 2011, Josh Linkner, “Gaining the Keys to a Creative Mind and Culture”, in Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, Wiley, →ISBN, step 2 (Prepare), page 102:
- It seemed inevitable: Slither was going to eat our lunch unless we upped our game and out-Slithered Slither. But here's the thing, The Slither Corporation doesn't actually exist. It's our fictive nemesis, our imaginary bad guys. Rather than battling a poorly performing company, we went up against our worst enemy—the company that we knew could put us out of business (if it really existed).
- 2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Time 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk”, in Time[2], New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2024-05-14:
- Today, thanks in large part to [Elon] Musk's pace-setting, auto companies from VW to Nissan are jostling to invest billions in electric vehicles. Their about-face is driven less by altruism than by a dawning realization that Musk is eating their lunch.
- 2023 September 27, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Weirdos Living Inside Our Phones”, in The Atlantic[3], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-12-30:
- Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are, indeed, eating traditional comedy’s lunch lately when it comes to funny characters.
Translations
[edit]to best or defeat someone thoroughly — see make short work of
Further reading
[edit]- Colin McIntosh, editor (2013), “eat someone’s lunch, idiom”, in Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 4th edition, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, reproduced in the Cambridge English Dictionary website, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “eat someone’s lunch”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- “eat someone’s or something’s lunch, idiom”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.