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  • 2002-02-26 (xsd:date)
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  • Etymology of Buy the Farm (en)
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  • Origins: This term has been part of the English lexicon since at least 1955, but its origins are unclear. Some theorize that an American soldier's G.I. insurance was sufficient to enable his family to settle the mortgage back home, thus a death in battle was succinctly described as He bought the farm. The problem with this etymology is that it has yet to prove out. Though buying the farm did become a way of saying he died (in battle or otherwise, soldier or anyone else), the connection between G.I.s' death benefits and swarms of families paying off mortgages with those sadly-gained funds is tenuous at best. Others postulate the term derived from wistful statements uttered by aviators who later met the Grim Reaper in dogfights; each making a statement to the effect that after the war was over, he'd like to settle down and buy a farm. He bought the farm thus became a way of saying His war is now over. Another theory leaves out soldiers entirely — according to it, farmers whose buildings were hit by crashing fighter planes would sue the government for damages, and those damages were often enough to pay off all outstanding mortgages on the property. Since very few pilots would survive such a crash, the pilot was said to have bought the farm with his life. These are charming tales filled with imagery and romance, but nothing other than our desire to believe supports any of them. Moreover, to buy it (meaning to die) existed in the language long before to buy the farm did. It's more reasonable to suppose the one is an extension of the other, with the farm substituting for (the often unstated) it. The Oxford English Dictionary offers this definition of buy: To suffer some mishap or reverse, specifically to be wounded; to get killed, to die; (of an airman) to be shot down.The earliest use of buy in this sense dates to 1825, more than a century before the earliest appearance of buy the farm. Lexicographer Dave Wilton concludes the farm is a slang reference to a burial plot (i.e., a piece of ground). Buy a plot appeared around the time of buy the farm (both mean the same thing), but it's a particular snippet of World War I slang that ties it all together: Become a landowner thus means to inhabit a cemetery plot. Barbara plot twist Mikkelson (en)
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