Crash and Burn

To crash and burn is to fail in something. But it's more than that, the failure is sudden, and everybody notices. It's a very public failure.

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English Phrase: Crash and Burn

Believe me; you never want to crash and burn.

Yes, you may say, it sounds like it hurts. Perhaps it does hurt, but at least not physically anyway.

The meaning of crash and burn is to fail in something. But it is also a little more than that. The failure is sudden, and everybody notices.

Imagine for a moment that you are a stage actor who forgets their lines. There you are, up on the stage, and thousands of people are watching you.

You have studied and practiced to no end. You went on stage fully intending to give your all, to pour your heart and soul into your performance, and now you can’t remember your lines.

You’re crashing and burning in front of everyone. It’s a very public failure.

Or we could think about the world of technology for a moment.

Thousands of startups are created each year based on a single idea for software or a device.

And every year, thousands of these startups crash and burn.

Now, of course, this example is not entirely disastrous because failure is as much a part of success as achievement is, but it still hurts.


This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 79.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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