Meanings
present singular third person buys the farm · participle present buying the farm · participle past bought the farm · past bought the farm
- USeuphemisticidiomaticinformalTo die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as if you buy it in a declared war.
1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, page 1313 more examples
Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!
1984, G. Harry Stine, Manna, page 221BETTY. Shoot, if I knew you was gonna buy the farm I coulda asked for everything you got in the world... How were you gonna do it? ¶ROGER (takes revolver out of briefcase). With this.
1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, →ISBN, page 212They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow.
2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, →ISBN, page 171Synonyms: buy it, buy the plot, buy the ranch, buy the big one, kick the bucket, punch one's ticket, meet your maker
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
More synonyms by meaning
verbpass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use. Still another links it to a sardonic attitude of farmers that farms are often so heavily mortgaged and farmers' finances so difficult that one could not finish buying one's farm until one was dead.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Danish tage billetten
- tage billettento die
Finnish potkaista tyhjää
- potkaista tyhjääto die
French passer l'arme à gauche, casser sa pipe
- passer l'arme à gaucheto die
- casser sa pipeto die
- avaler son extrait de naissanceto die
- calancherto die
- passer de vie à trépasto die
- creverto die
- cannerto die
German den Löffel abgeben
- den Löffel abgebento die
Norwegian skride hen til de evige jaktmarker
- skride hen til de evige jaktmarkerto die
Polish kopnąć w kalendarz
- kopnąć w kalendarzto die
Portuguese bater as botas
- bater as botasto die
Cite this entry
buy the farm. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/buy%20the%20farm
“buy the farm.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/buy%20the%20farm. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “buy the farm,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/buy%20the%20farm.
Source: buy the farm on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.