break the bank
Meaning: To win or spend so much money that a casino or financial institution loses its entire available funds.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Category: The Absurd
Origin: From gambling: a successful player can drain the house's reserves, exhausting the money set aside to cover losses.
More idioms — The Absurd
- Augean stables — An extremely filthy, corrupt, or morally decayed place or situation that seems impossible…
- play with house money — To take risks when one has nothing personal to lose, or to act recklessly because the sta…
- were you born in a tent — An admonishment to someone who has carelessly left a door open.
- rip it up — To perform with energy, excitement, and conspicuous success.
- anything goes — There are no rules, restrictions, or moral limits.
- at latter Lammas — Never; at a time that will never come.
More English idioms
- break the mold — To abandon convention and do something radically new or different.
- hoist by one's own petard — To be harmed or destroyed by one's own trap or scheme meant to injure someone else.
- sleep with the fishes — To be dead, with one's body disposed of in the ocean or a large body of water.
- on eternal patrol — Lost or missing at sea, presumed dead.
- all mouth and trousers — Full of loud boasting and empty talk, lacking substance or follow-through.
- turn on one's heel — To suddenly depart or walk away, often in a dramatic or dismissive manner.
From our tongue twisters
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? — A 'w/ch/ck' drill that accelerates comically — and nobody really knows the answer.
- The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick. — Believed by Guinness to be among the hardest in English — 'six/sick/sheikh/sheep' blur in…
- Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter's bitter. — A 'b / t / tt' plosive drill that bounces between Betty, butter, and bitter.