Dictionary.com

make-or-break

[ meyk-er-breyk ]
/ ˈmeɪk ərˈbreɪk /

adjective

either completely successful or utterly disastrous: a make-or-break marketing policy.

QUIZZES

BECOME A PRO CHEF WITH THIS EXQUISITE CUISINE QUIZ!

Even if you can't be a professional chef, you can at least talk like one with this vocabulary quiz.
Question 1 of 9
You may have read the word "simmer" in a recipe or two, but what does it really mean?
To cook in water that begins cold and then reaches a boil.
To stew in a sauce for a long time.
To cook in water, just below boiling temperature.
TAKE THE QUIZ TO FIND OUT

Origin of make-or-break

First recorded in 1915–20
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2020

Idioms and Phrases with 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.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.