now or never
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
do something immediately or miss the opportunity
Literally: at this moment or not at all
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
He desperately wanted to rest, but it was now or never.
But it is proud that it eschewed the now - or - never mentality that drove others to make acquisitions in the run - up to Europe's single market in financial services.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). 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 “now or never” mean?
do something immediately or miss the opportunity Literally: at this moment or not at all
Is “now or never” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.