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live on borrowed time

Idioms  

  1. see on borrowed time.

  2. Outlive reasonable expectations, as in Our twenty-year-old car is living on borrowed time, or The vet said our dog is living on borrowed time. This expression alludes to time borrowed from death. [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Now the Santa Monica lions, the only apex predator operating within a megacity, live on borrowed time.

From Scientific American • Nov. 23, 2015

I am so sorry for the folks who quit, retire, "get on the shelf" or live on "borrowed time."

From The University of Hard Knocks by Parlette, Ralph

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.