them's the breaks
1
9.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
así es la vida
- After the team lost the match, the coach reminded everyone that "them's the breaks."
Examples
-
And if the folks don't like it," he said, shrugging philosophically, "them's the breaks.
Fiction book (1991) -
But hey, them's the breaks.
Blog text (10) -
I do mean it, and maybe you should not be doing IVC; them's the breaks...
Blog text (1) -
Sorry if you're offended, but them's the breaks.
Blog text (2) -
Sometimes life doesn't go as planned, and you just have to say, "them's the breaks."
-
When things didn't work out, he shrugged and said, "Well, them's the breaks."
Synonyms
643
3.3
Saying that something is unfortunate or disappointing
7
8.2
Accept failure or criticism bravely without complaining
How Negative
- Offensive
- Informal
1
9.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
them's + the + break
This is a colloquial, dialectal idiom meaning 'that's how things go' or acceptance of setbacks; its meaning is not a straightforward composition of the parts. The nonstandard contraction 'them's' and the plural 'breaks' do not transparently indicate this sense, so a B1 learner who only knows the literal words would not reliably infer the idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
The idiom them's the breaks comes from an older saying 'those are the breaks', where breaks meant a small change of luck in a game, for example when a ball bounces the wrong way and you cannot control it. So the phrase is used to accept a bad result, meaning 'that's life' or 'you can't do anything about it'.