waiting to happen
37
5.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
a punto de ocurrir
- No, guys, it's an accident waiting to happen.
It's a failure waiting to happen, but at least it comes with this cool Linus Tech Tips case badge.
- It's a failure waiting to happen, but at least it comes with this cool Linus Tech Tips case badge.
- Wow, a giant slow moving disaster waiting to happen is getting his own blimp.
- And I was like my hammer that expectations are resentments waiting to happen.
Examples
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And this guy is a disaster waiting to happen.
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This is a disaster waiting to happen...
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It's an accident waiting to happen.
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Mike is an accident waiting to happen, and they happen to him all the time.
Blog text (19) -
Otherwise, yeah, just total disaster waiting to happen, right?
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This is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
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But somebody should have seen that this was a tragedy waiting to happen and done something about it.
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's a disaster waiting to happen.
Blog text (11) -
Often, a banking failure was waiting to happen even before the currency turmoil.
Academic text (1999) -
The overcrowding in the city is a crisis waiting to happen.
Synonyms
76
4.1
Waiting to happen to someone in the future
55
4.0
Going to happen very soon, usually something bad
Expected to happen soon
Antonyms
How Inevitable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'very likely to occur soon' is directly inferable from combining 'waiting' (being in a pending state) with 'to happen' (to occur): the phrase literally portrays an event that is poised to occur. This is a standard, compositional adjective+infinitive pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely understand it.
Etymology
Waiting to happen comes from the image of something already set up and just waiting for one small thing to happen, like a row of dominos ready to fall. That's why we use it to say something is 'certain to happen' soon, often a problem.