blow up
v. phr.— «He served on staffs that “blew up,” coaching parlance for a mass firing at the end of a losing season.» —“Coaches earn big assist: Major football programs boost salaries” by Tim Griffin Express-News (San Antonio, Texas) May 18, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...