sink or swim
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Fail or succeed.
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The Highways Department will sink or swim on the basis of everyone pulling together.’
‘ He threw him in there newly dead, and Benedetta with him living, to sink or swim together.
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). Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).
Common questions
What does “sink or swim” mean?
Fail or succeed.
Is “sink or swim” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.