make-or-break

[ meyk-er-breyk ]

adjective

1. either completely successful or utterly disastrous:

   a make-or-break marketing policy.

Word History and Origins

Origin of make-or-break¹

First recorded in 1915–20

Idioms and Phrases

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.

Example Sentences

Every director thinks that every one of their sequences is the make-or-break sequence of the film.”

From Los Angeles Times

For Jacques Audiard, his make-or-break for Cannes winner “Emilia Pérez” was the movie’s first scene.

From Los Angeles Times

Everybody needs some cheat codes to optimize their education dollars — especially if cost is the make-or-break factor in going to school.

From Salon

There’s some noise in national polling—some polls show Trump and Harris breaking even, others show Harris expanding her lead—but the best sign for Harris has to be in the make-or-break state of Pennsylvania.

From Slate

Or that an accomplished woman wearing expensive jewelry on a potential make-or-break night for her career was somehow disqualifying.

From Slate