English · Idiom Candidate

drop the ball

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Disappoint.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Làm thất vọng

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

‘ Well, see, in the mid and late ' 70s I think the music industry dropped the ball, and I think that's why there was rarely a good band in the ' 80s.

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. Figurative class: Euphemism (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “drop the ball” mean?

Disappoint.

Is “drop the ball” formal or informal?

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

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