drop the bomb

present singular third person drops the bomb · participle present dropping the bomb · participle past dropped the bomb · past dropped the bomb

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drop, bomb.
2. idiomaticto reveal dramatic and unexpected news that changes a situation completely

   Then she'd dropped the bomb: she was pregnant.

   2014, Rexanne Becnel, The Christmas Train, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   A mere two months after the New Orleans hearings, the Supreme Court dropped the bomb that Eastland and other white southerners feared: Brown. Much as the Chinese Communists' victory and the Russian's building of the atomic bomb in 1949 had ignited the Cold War and anti-Communism, the Brown decision took the struggle for and against black freedom to a new level of intensity.

   2011, Chris Myers Asch, The Senator and the Sharecropper, →ISBN

   Melanie dropped the bomb. "His buddy was a Mr. Henry Decatur."

   2011, Cege Smith, Edge of Shadows, →ISBN

   Sylvia finally returned my calls yesterday, and while I was in the middle of chewing her out about the airconditioning, she dropped the bomb. Said it didn't matter because she'd sold the building.

   2014, Mary Kay Andrews, Save the Date, →ISBN

   Natasha gulped and tried to look cheerful when she dropped the bomb on him. “Four down, forty-six to go.” Jeff froze. “Excuse me? Did I hear you right? That means you have to buy fifty Christmas presents?”

   2014, Gail Sattler, The Best Man's Holiday Romance, →ISBN