by a landslide
9
3.8
- idiom
- Informal
:
por un amplio margen
- Romney is actually winning by a landslide in the suburbs of Obama's Chicago.
- won by a landslide
This must be very gratifying for you by a landslide.
- This must be very gratifying for you by a landslide.
Examples
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Suppose a candidate is popular enough to win an election by a landslide.
Blog text (3) -
The Republican incumbent won by a landslide.
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You won by a landslide.
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And Johnson won by a landslide on November third.
Fiction book (1990) -
Nixon will win by a landslide, I guarantee it.
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On election day, the polling was all off, and Walker won by a landslide.
Blog text (7) -
Say, I heard you were elected over old Todd Potts by a landslide, congratulations.
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And when an election was held, to Giyt's astonishment, he won by a landslide.
Fiction book (1997) -
Kibaki lost the referendum by a landslide: 58 percent to 42 percent.
Academic text (2010) -
In the last election, the candidate secured victory by a landslide, receiving over 70% of the votes.
Antonyms
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
by + a + landslide
The phrase maps a concrete image ('landslide' as a large, overwhelming movement) onto the political domain, so a learner who knows 'landslide' as a big, crushing event plus the preposition 'by' can plausibly infer an overwhelming margin. However, the electoral sense is a metaphorical extension rather than a strictly compositional meaning, and some B1 learners who only know the literal geologic sense may not reliably predict the idiomatic use without exposure.
Etymology
The idiom by a landslide comes from the image of a landslide, when a huge mass of earth and rocks suddenly moves down a hill and sweeps things away. So, when someone wins by a landslide, they win 'by a very large margin'.