Home » Dictionary » brick

brick

brick v. (generally) to fail; (of a person) to commit an error or do poorly; (especially in sports) to miss or fail to reach a target, goal, or destination; (of a musical recording) to fail to be successful or sell well; to stiff; (of an electronic device) to be rendered useless. Editorial Note: A thing that has failed can be called a brick. The phrase to drop a brick, meaning to commit a verbal faux pas, dates to at least as early as 1923, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, although Eric Partridge, in the appendix to his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (p. 1379) recounts an anecdote that purports to date the phrase drop a brick ‘make a mistake’ to a single specific event in 1905 at Trinity College, Cambridge. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

4 comments

Further reading

Love Bites (episode #1569)

The word filibuster has a long and colorful history, going back to the days when pirates roamed the high seas. Today it refers to hijacking a piece of legislation. Plus, the language of yoga teachers: When doing a guided meditation, you may hear...