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Glite Dictionary
to eat someone's lunch

to eat someone's lunch

1 8.6
To beat someone in business by taking their customers and sales
  • idiom
  • /it ˈsʌmˌwʌnz lʌnʧ/
  • Informal
translation icon : superar a alguien
  • A few years ago, many legal technology pundits were gleefully predicting that upstart dot-coms would eventually eat the two giants' lunch.

Examples

  • Now, you listen to me... if you blow this, CBS will be eating your lunch next season, and I'll be there with them, 'cause I'm out of here!

    Natural Born Killers (1994)

  • It's not that I need it to be awesome because I'm on Windows, but you really should be able to get beginners to use a DVCS early, and Hg will always eat Git's lunch if it doesn't take usability seriously.

    Blog text (14)

  • Whatever the case, it's pretty clear that OFA and its supporting players have eaten Romco's lunch and pissed in Karl's milkshake.

    Blog text (3)

  • I remember reading an article in some magazine back sometime around the end of the '70s to the early '80s, when due to the various oil price spikes of recent years, small cars, mostly imported from Japan, were starting to really take off sales-wise, and they were eating Detroit's lunch in that market segment.

    Blog text (14)

  • The new startup is poised to eat the competition's lunch with its innovative technology.

  • If we don't improve our marketing strategy, our rivals will definitely eat our lunch this year.

  • Many analysts believe that the new app could eat Facebook's lunch in the social networking space.

Synonyms

to outsmart
vsto eat someone's lunch
54 4.1

To get an advantage over someone by being clever

focuses on outperforming broadly not only by cleverness or skill
to eat (someone) for breakfast
vsto eat someone's lunch
  • Informal
4 8.3

Defeat someone easily without much effort

focuses on beating through skillful competition and taking rivals' opportunities
to get one up on
vsto eat someone's lunch
  • Informal
1 6.1

To have an advantage over someone in competition

is about taking another's opportunities or success rather than just winning
to eat you for breakfast
vsto eat someone's lunch
  • Informal
1 8.4

Beat someone easily to show you are much better

often involves taking others' opportunities rather than simply overwhelming them
to eat my lunch
vsto eat someone's lunch
  • Informal
1 9.0

To beat someone and gain an advantage over them in competition

focuses on outperforming by taking opportunities or success in business or competition

How Dominant

to dominate
275 3.7
to eat someone's lunch
  • Informal
1 8.6
to beat
∞ 1.4
edge
310 3.8
to compete
983 2.6

Surface Forms

eat someone's lunch infinitive
eating someone's lunch present participle
eats someone's lunch third person singular
ate someone's lunch past
eaten someone's lunch past participle

Morphology

eat + someone's + lunch

The literal composition (eat + someone's lunch = consume someone's meal) does not transparently yield the commerce/competition sense of outperforming or taking someone's opportunities; the meaning is an informal, metaphorical extension and not derivable from the parts. This is an idiomatic, language-specific metaphor (especially in informal American English), so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents is unlikely to predict the intended sense.

Etymology

Eat someone's lunch may come from the image of a bigger kid who eats another person's lunch, leaving them hungry and without their food. That's why the phrase now means 'to outperform or outcompete someone' by taking their chances or customers.