go up in smoke
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To fail or be destroyed, often suddenly or completely
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
thất bại hoặc bị hủy hoại, thường đột ngột hoặc hoàn toàn
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: something burning and disappearing into smoke
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Five grand, no problem as long as you're prepared to er go up in smoke.
‘ We haven't worked all these months to have it go up in smoke now,’ he said.
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “go up in smoke” mean?
To fail or be destroyed, often suddenly or completely Literally: something burning and disappearing into smoke
Is “go up in smoke” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.