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• make-or-break
  make-or-break

  adjective

  either completely successful or utterly disastrous.
• make or break
  make or break

  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.

make-or-break

American  

[meyk-er-breyk] / ˈmeɪk ərˈbreɪk /

adjective

1. either completely successful or utterly disastrous.

   a make-or-break marketing policy.

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make or break Idioms  

1. 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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Etymology

Origin of make-or-break

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

“It’s not make-or-break for a lot of these companies on these single launch events,” Kann, who covers technology, consumer and industrial firms, told MarketWatch.

From MarketWatch • May 21, 2026

Ms. Blume’s professor was her earliest professional champion, but her make-or-break mentor was Dick Jackson, an editor at Bradbury Press, who Ms. Blume says “gave me my career and changed my life.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 13, 2026

According to Katz, women - particularly those under 35 - are now emerging as a make-or-break demographic for the genre's biggest releases.

From BBC • Jan. 16, 2026

The first film is a make-or-break for many actors turned directors.

From Salon • Jan. 1, 2026

“This is the make-or-break moment,” the mystery woman with the hidden face said to Mom and Dad, as if Max wasn’t right there listening.

From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix