buy the farm
"buy-the-farm" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“buy the farm” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
Corpus desk
Index EN-buy-the-farm · buy the farm · English
buy the farm · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | buy the farm |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “buy the farm” in English
Rare enough to double-check
buy the farm is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for buy the farm, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Etymologically, the entry records: Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they… The correct English form is buy the farm, spelled B-U-Y- -T-H-E- -F-A-R-M.
Definition
- 1To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how buy the farm appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as if you buy it in a declared war.
Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!
Etymology
Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use. Still another links it to a sardonic attitude of farmers that farms are often so heavily mortgaged and farmers' finances so difficult that one could not finish buying one's farm until one was dead.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.