What Happens When Something ‘Goes Down the Flames’?

To go down in flames means to fail spectacularly; to fail on a big, massive scale.

Suppose a big-budget megastar movie tanks at the box office, you might say that it went down in flames.

It is believed that this phrase comes from the world war. When the planes were shot down by the enemy forces, a big fire would erupt, and the planes would plunge to the ground consumed in roaring flames.

Thus, this expression now figuratively means “to fail on a grand scale”.

Let’s see an example —

“I had invested about half a million dollars in my crypto startup. My whole company went down in flames after the government banned cryptocurrency.”

It means my startup failed and shut down causing me a grand loss of half a million dollars after the government ban on cryptocurrency.

The vivid image of a plane catching fire and crashing has given rise to two other phrases with similar meanings — Shoot someone down in flames — which means to ruin someone completely and — to crash and burn — which means to fail at something completely and dramatically.

I hope it is not difficult to connect the dots here.

I hope you found this story interesting. If you did, buy my full course on Udemy or watch it for free on Skillshare by signing up here. This course covers nearly 380 idioms with their origins and backstories.

Hi, I am Gauri Shanker, a Vocab teacher and enthusiast. I teach vocabulary in a fun and engaging way. You can check out my courses here.