reputation is everything

6.0

Having a good name is the most important thing

idiom

Informal

: la reputación lo es todo

In the hospitality industry, reputation is everything because customers rely on reviews and word of mouth.

Examples

In business, reputation is everything.
When it comes to luxury brands, reputation is everything and can make or break a business.
For many politicians, reputation is everything, so they go to great lengths to protect it.
She always says, reputation is everything!
For many politicians, reputation is everything, so they go to great lengths to protect it.
In the hospitality industry, reputation is everything because customers rely on reviews and word of mouth.
When it comes to luxury brands, reputation is everything and can make or break a business.

Surface Forms

reputation is everything main

Morphology

reputation + be + everything

The meaning ‘reputation is the most important thing’ is directly and compositionally derived from the constituents 'reputation' + 'is' + 'everything' through a basic copular construction. This simple, cross-linguistically common pattern makes the sentence immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the component words.

Etymology

Reputation is everything comes from markets and shops long ago where a seller's reputation, meaning what people said about them, decided if customers came, so it really was everything for their success. So the phrase now means 'the most important thing'.