fall victim

present singular third person falls victim · participle present falling victim · past fell victim · participle past fallen victim

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo suffer as a result of external circumstances or someone else's actions.

   Arsenal also have a score to settle with Liverpool after losing 2-0 at home in the recent FA Cup third-round tie, when they had so many chances to score before almost inevitably falling victim to two late sucker-punches.

   2024 January 30, Phil McNulty, “Nottingham Forest 1-2 Arsenal: Gunners in title race after they close gap to leaders Liverpool”, in BBC Sport

   2 more examples

   Obviously, birds are very vulnerable to human persecution at such passage sites, where hecatombs of raptors fall victim every year to human greed or pleasure. Examples of important areas for seasonal mass migration and / or resting of[…]

   1961, The Horace M. Albright Conservation Lectureship

   F. Platten led a group of several score Swiss workers with their families (many of them subsequently also fell victim to repression) who had organized an agricultural co-operative not far from Simbirsk, Lenin's birthplace, back in 1923.

   1989, The Stalin Phenomenon, Stosius Incorporated/Advent Books Division

   Synonyms: fall prey