buy the farm

Died. Did you hear that old Walt bought the farm? What a shame—at least he got to spend 92 years on this earth.

slang To die. Did you hear that old Walt bought the farm? What a shame—at least he got to spend 92 years on this earth.

Sl. to die; to get killed. (The farm is a burial plot.) I'll pass through this illness; I'm too young to buy the farm. He lived for a few hours after his collapse, but then he bought it.

see under buy it.

If someone buys the farm, they die. Sometimes I believed I was cured. Maybe I wasn't going to buy the farm after all. Note: A possible explanation for this expression is that, in wartime, American Air Force pilots sometimes said that they wanted to stop flying, buy a farm or ranch, and lead a peaceful life. `Buy the farm' then came to be used when a pilot was killed in a crash.

To die, especially suddenly or violently.

Die, be killed. This term dates from about 1950, and alludes to military pilots on training flights over rural areas of the United States. Occasionally a pilot would crash and damage a farmer’s land; the farmer then would sue the government for an amount large enough to pay off the mortgage. Since such a crash was nearly always fatal, the pilot was said to buy the farm with his life. An older equivalent is buy it, which since World War I has meant to be killed and also, since the 1930s, to be charged for damaging something.

Die. This phrase comes from the military: members of the armed forces were issued insurance policies. Many servicemen speculated that when they returned to civilian life, they would buy a farm back home or pay off the mortgage on one that they or their parents owned. To die was literally to retire, and so combat victims were said to have “bought the farm.” Other phrases that mean “to die” are “cash in your chips” (as if checking out of a poker game), “fall off the perch” (an expiring caged bird), and “go South” (someone now living up North returning to his or her native soil).