in the red
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
having a financial deficit
Literally: colored red, indicating negative balance
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
MOVIES that are a smash hit at the box - office still end up losing millions.
The £550 m mentioned above was charged against profits for the year following an actuarial valuation of the company's main pension fund as it stood on January 1 1993.
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 “in the red” mean?
having a financial deficit Literally: colored red, indicating negative balance
Is “in the red” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.