die on the vine

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

To fail or be abandoned before coming to fruition

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

thất bại hoặc bị bỏ rơi trước khi đạt được mục tiêu

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: grapes dying on the vine
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The Church of England was meant to wither and die on the vine, not to survive.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “die on the vine” mean?

To fail or be abandoned before coming to fruition Literally: grapes dying on the vine

Is “die on the vine” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.