up in flames
22
6.9
- idiom
:
en llamas
- Gladys watches in stunned silence as her daughter and only chance at state go up in flames.
- went up in flames
Debbie House explodes, goes up in flames.
- Debbie House explodes, goes up in flames.
- But so back to yeah, your business went up in flames when the mortgage did.
- He can put out burning buildings, but his marriage is going up in flames at home and, and he can't fix it.
- But our brain said if you don't talk to this man, your country will go up in flames.
- Until I lit a lighter and then accidentally, the plates went up in flames.
- But to be honest with you, my whole fucking house should have gone up in flames, but for some fucking reason it didn't.
- They have things that kind of set them off or that worry, worry them more, you know, if your house went up in flames.
- Yeah, there's never blood in any mind you, they do go up in flames, bits, bits carved off them.
Examples
-
Most Bates County records had gone up in flames during the fighting.
Academic text (2010) -
The whole forest went up in flames.
-
The place goes up in flames.
-
The whole forest is up in flames.
-
When the storage units went up in flames, it was quite a sight.
Blog text (21) -
An arson wave one night in 1998 saw four buildings, including the community centre, go up in flames.
Fiction book (2002) -
An hour or so after I left York, England, in 1984, the city's ancient cathedral went up in flames.
Academic text (1993) -
At the central Mont-Bouet market, stalls went up in flames; the largest stores were looted.
Academic text (1998) -
The next year, Gus's brother Frank had one of his marble finishing factories in Canton go up in flames.
Academic text (2013) -
The whole forest went up in flames during the dry season, leaving nothing but ash.
Synonyms
7
4.3
Badly damaged or destroyed by fire
5
5.4
Completely covered in flames and burning
1
6.2
An area badly damaged by fire
Damaged by fire or very strong heat
Antonyms
How Destroyed
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally describes being engulfed by fire—combining 'up' + 'in' + 'flame(s)' yields the image of something burning completely, which a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can reconstruct. The extended, figurative uses (e.g. plans "going up in flames") follow a straightforward metaphorical mapping from literal burning to destruction, a pattern common across languages, so the meaning is predictable from the parts.
Etymology
The idiom up in flames comes from the picture of something catching fire and the flames going up, burning it away very quickly. So when a plan, object, or hope goes up in flames, it means it is 'completely destroyed' or 'lost suddenly'.