to blow the doors off
2
7.2
- idiom
- Informal
- With their innovative marketing strategy, the new product launch blew the doors off previous sales records.
Examples
-
Her performance in the talent show completely blew the doors off, leaving the audience in awe.
-
And if you do and you blow the doors off, it's like, wow, OK, people really want to see this project.
-
But if you wanted AMD to blow the doors off NVIDIA, well, you might be a little disappointed.
-
"What we have here in Wisconsin is a ground game that will blow the doors off of political history," the Kenosha native and former Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman told Wisconsin Reporter in a phone interview Saturday evening.
Blog text (4) -
The team exceeded all expectations and really blew the doors off their competitors at the championship.
Synonyms
392
4.1
To manage to do something difficult or unexpected
30
4.0
To have a big, unexpected success because of luck
21
7.9
Do very well in a competition or challenge
19
6.0
To beat someone or something completely by a lot
9
5.1
To become very successful, often quickly
9
3.4
To have a big success people do not expect
8
4.5
To become very successful and famous in your work
7
8.4
To suddenly perform very well, often in games or music
5
5.3
To do better than people expect and have more success
3
6.1
To succeed in doing something difficult
1
8.0
To impress many people by doing something very well
1
7.4
Do much better than expected
1
3.9
To do much better than people expected
To get someone or something better than you deserve
To make someone very impressed or be much better than something
Antonyms
How Impressive
184
3.8
- Informal
2
7.2
81
3.7
29
4.8
827
2.0
∞
1.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal words 'blow' + 'doors' + 'off' create a vivid image of forcefully removing doors, so a learner could infer a strong impact or overwhelming effect from the constituents. However, extending that physical image to the specific sense 'achieve outstanding success' is a figurative/metaphorical jump that is not fully predictable for a B1 learner without prior exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Blow the doors off may come from the image of a big explosion that actually blows the doors off their hinges, leaving everything wide open from the force. So it now means 'to do much better than expected'.