rip off the band-aid
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To do something unpleasant quickly to get it over with
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
làm một việc khó chịu nhanh chóng để kết thúc nó
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: remove a band-aid quickly
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
I'll rip off the band-aid and tell him the bad news now
AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)
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 “rip off the band-aid” mean?
To do something unpleasant quickly to get it over with Literally: remove a band-aid quickly
Is “rip off the band-aid” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.