make-or-break

[meyk-er-breyk]

adjective

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

Origin of make-or-break

First recorded in 1915–20

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

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.