do a number on
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to severely harm or damage someone or something
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
gây tổn hại nghiêm trọng hoặc làm hỏng ai đó hoặc điều gì đó
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: perform a numerical operation
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The old house — Tod really did a number on it.
You could tell that she was looking forward to doing her number on the wart.
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 “do a number on” mean?
to severely harm or damage someone or something Literally: perform a numerical operation
Is “do a number on” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.