professional suicide
1
7.8
- noun
- /prəˈfɛʃənl ˈsuːɪˌsaɪd/
- Literature
:
suicidio profesional
- Reporting unethical behavior in the workplace can often feel like a form of professional suicide for many employees.
- commit professional suicide
Examples
-
Accepting a position that goes against your values could lead to a kind of professional suicide in your career.
-
As far as I'm concerned, even to raise these subjects is professional suicide.
-
As an architect, keeping your social circles exclusive to other architects is professional suicide.
Blog text (23) -
Might have risked it if it wasn't professional suicide.
-
That you are brilliant... ...driven... ...a major pain in the ass... ...and obsessed with a field of study he considers tantamount... ...to professional suicide.
-
Reporting ethical violations may be tantamount to professional suicide.
Academic text (1998) -
A young lawyer can report the misconduct to disciplinary authorities, which may mean professional suicide, she says, because the rules provide no protection to those who comply with the reporting requirement.
Academic text (1998) -
Choosing to speak out against corruption in your organization may be seen as professional suicide by your colleagues.
Synonyms
A choice or action that makes it harder for you to get promoted
Surface Forms
Morphology
professional + suicide
The phrase combines 'professional' (relating to one's career) with 'suicide' (literally self-killing) to signal a self‑destructive act that damages or ends a career. This is a metaphorical extension of the literal sense, so a learner who knows both words can often infer the general idea but not the precise conventional meaning without some exposure. Cross‑linguistically similar uses (e.g., 'political suicide', 'career suicide') make the mapping somewhat guessable but not fully predictable.
Etymology
The idiom professional suicide uses the strong word suicide as a shocking image: it shows a choice that 'ends' your job or makes it very hard to get work later. That's why the phrase means an action that seriously damages or ends someone's career.