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Glite Dictionary
to come up with snake eyes

to come up with snake eyes

9.9
To have very bad luck at an important time
  • idiom
  • Informal
: tener mala suerte
  • Whenever she plays poker, she seems to come up with snake eyes at the worst times.

Examples

  • We invested so much, but unfortunately, we came up with snake eyes on this deal.

  • He always seems to come up with snake eyes when it matters most.

  • After hours of preparation, he still came up with snake eyes in the final interview.

  • I can't believe I came up with snake eyes during that game!

  • Despite his best efforts, he came up with snake eyes when he needed a win in the last round of the competition.

  • After all the planning and hard work, my team came up with snake eyes on the project presentation.

  • She hoped for a promotion but came up with snake eyes after the tough review process.

Synonyms

to go pear-shaped
vsto come up with snake eyes
  • UK
3 7.9

To fail or go badly wrong, especially a plan

is about a person experiencing a very poor result in an important moment
down on one's luck
vsto come up with snake eyes
6.7

Having bad luck, often with money

is a brief single very bad result often at an important moment

Antonyms

to succeed
827 2.0

To reach a goal after trying hard

to hit the jackpot
30 4.0

To have a big, unexpected success because of luck

How Unlucky

to come up with snake eyes
  • Informal
9.9
to fail
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

come up with snake eyes infinitive
came up with snake eyes past
come up with snake eyes past participle
coming up with snake eyes present participle
comes up with snake eyes third person singular

Morphology

come + up + with + snake + eyes

Although 'come up with' is compositional (to obtain or produce), the core element 'snake eyes' is an idiomatic gambling term for rolling double ones that signals very bad luck; its meaning cannot be predicted from 'snake' + 'eyes' by a B1 learner. Because the idiomatic phrase 'snake eyes' is essential to the overall meaning and requires cultural/gambling knowledge, the whole MWE is opaque to learners who only know the constituent words.

Etymology

Come up with snake eyes comes from dice games: when both dice show a one, the two small dots looked like snake eyes and that was the worst roll. So come up with snake eyes means 'to get a very bad or unlucky result'.