blow up in one's face

blow up in one's face

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

blow up in one's face (third-person singular simple present blows up in one's face, present participle blowing up in one's face, simple past blew up in one's face, past participle blown up in one's face)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To fail disastrously.
   • 1972, James Whittaker, Albert Trieschman (editors), Children Away from Home: A Sourcebook of Residential Treatment,

     Whether the specific pecking order of the game I let them play today had anything to do with the fact that it blew up in my face after five minutes is a question that can be answered only in empirical terms.

   • 1999, Dena Rosenbloom, Mary Beth Williams and Barbara E. Watkins, Life after trauma: a workbook for healing,

     If I took the risk to speak with my friend and the whole thing blew up in my face, I'd probably feel ashamed and exposed whenever I thought about it for a very, very long time.

   • 2002, Joan Barfoot, Critical injuries, page 118:

     So I wish you luck, but don't come crying to me when it blows up in your face.

Translations

fail disastrously

Afrikaans: jou gat sien (af) (literally “to see your hole”) Arabic: please add this translation if you can Armenian: տապալվել (hy) (tapalvel), ձախողվել (hy) (jaxołvel) Chinese: Mandarin: 栽跟頭／栽跟头 (zh) (zāigēntou) Czech: vybouchnout Dutch: please add this translation if you can Finnish: räjähtää silmille French: (vulgar) exploser à la gueule, (vulgar) péter à la gueule (fr) German: jemandem auf die Füße fallen (literally “to fall on one’s feet”); ins Auge gehen (de) (literally “to hit one's eye”) Hindi: please add this translation if you can Italian: please add this translation if you can Japanese: please add this translation if you can Korean: please add this translation if you can Portuguese: explodir na cara de Russian: накры́ться ме́дным та́зом (ru) pf (nakrýtʹsja médnym tázom, literally “to be covered with a copper basin”) Spanish: explotar en la cara de Vietnamese: please add this translation if you can

See also

• hoist by one's own petard