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make-or-break

[ meyk-er-breyk ]

adjective

  1. either completely successful or utterly disastrous:

    a make-or-break marketing policy.



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Word History and Origins

Origin of make-or-break1

First recorded in 1915–20
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Idioms and Phrases

Cause either total success or total ruin, as in This assignment will make or break her as a reporter . This rhyming expression, first recorded in Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1840), has largely replaced the much older (16th-century) alliterative synonym make or mar , at least in America.
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

According to Kerr, the snack assortment may not be the single make-or-break factor in a dispensary’s success, but it’s a key part of the experience, especially when you consider how much of retail, cannabis or otherwise, is about the story you tell through sight.

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France's Marine Le Pen faces a make-or-break moment on Monday, as a judge rules on whether she should be banned from the next presidential election.

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But it's being seen by many as a make-or-break title for French publisher Ubisoft, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world.

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The new release, seen by many as a make-or-break title for the French gaming giant, has already been delayed twice.

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It could be a make-or-break moment for Sheinbaum, who is less than five months into her six-year term as Mexico’s first female president.

From

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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make one's waymake out