it's showtime
16
6.3
- idiom
- /ɪts ˈʃoʊˌtaɪm/
- Informal
:
empieza el espectáculo
- As the lights dimmed, the director announced, 'it's showtime!'
- Okay, it's showtime
- Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime
- Now, it's showtime
Examples
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All right, it's showtime.
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Well, it's showtime, kid.
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Come on, Top Cop, it's showtime.
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All right, everybody, it's showtime.
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It's showtime, fire it up!
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After forever, we all put our Orioles caps back on as the Pirates take the field, and it's showtime.
Fiction book (2002) -
Tell her it's showtime.
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Ok, it's showtime!
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- It's showtime, folks.
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Okay, it's showtime.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
it's + showtime
The phrase is directly compositional: 'it's' = 'it is' and 'showtime' = 'the time a show begins', so a learner who knows both constituents can infer 'it is time to start the show' and thus that an event is beginning. The pragmatic nuance of excitement or 'let's begin' is a predictable, conventional extension of this literal meaning and is cross‑linguistically common, making the expression transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
It's showtime comes from the theater: when the lights go down and the curtain opens, someone would call out show time to tell people the performance was starting. So, today people say it to mean the 'beginning of an important event' said with excitement.