end in smoke

E

to end in smoke (idiom)
/tuː ɛnd ɪn smoʊk/

Variants

• go up in smoke
• end up in smoke
• turn to smoke

Meanings

• It means to fail completely after showing initial promise.
• To come to nothing despite efforts or high expectations.
• Vanish or disappear without any result.

Synonyms: fail; collapse; flop; fizzle; vanish; dissolve; disintegrate

Example Sentences

1. The company’s big expansion plan to end in smoke when funding fell through.
2. All his months of hard work to end in smoke after the contract was canceled.
3. Their dream vacation to end in smoke when the travel agency went bankrupt.
4. Their startup ended in smoke when investors backed out.
5. Their plan to launch a new app ended up in smoke when the developer quit.
6. Their outdoor wedding plans went up in smoke when a sudden storm flooded the venue.

Origin and History

The idiomatic sense of phrases like “end in smoke” / “go up in smoke” belongs to English and develops from literal images of destruction by fire and the rapid disappearance of objects into smoke. Lexicographers trace the modern figurative sense—meaning plans or hopes being destroyed or dissipating—to early 20th-century English usage, with authorities dating the common figurative phrasing to the early 1930s.

Earliest Printed Records

The verb phrase used literally (“went up in smoke”) appears widely in early 20th-century newspapers (examples appear in Australian and American press in the 1930s), and digital newspaper archives show occurrences from 1932–1933 in press reports. For the figurative sense—plans or hopes being ruined—standard etymological sources mark ca. 1933 as the date when the figurative reading became established in English.

Theories About the Origin

1. Literal-To-Figurative Shift – The simplest and most widely accepted account is the literal→figurative semantic shift: things that are literally burned “go up in smoke,” so the image was extended metaphorically to mean that projects or hopes are destroyed or vanish. This pathway (literal disaster → figurative ruin) is the standard mechanism recorded by etymologists.
2. Evaporation/Vanishing Metaphor – Smoke evokes rapid dispersal and invisibility. Cognitive-metaphor analysis argues that because smoke disperses quickly and leaves nothing behind, speakers naturally used smoke as a vehicle to express disappearance, failure, or dissipation of results. This is a cross-linguistic conceptual image.
3. Cultural-Technological Reinforcement – The early 20th century saw large, newsworthy fires (industrial, urban, wartime book-burnings, etc.) and the rise of mass media. Recurrent reporting of actual fires and the figurative use in headlines and commentary may have helped fix and popularize the figurative sense across English varieties in the 1930s. Contemporary newspaper examples from 1932–1933 illustrate how the phrase circulated in the press.
4. Earlier Idiomatic Relatives – Etymological records note an earlier image — phrases like “come to smoke” (meaning “come to nothing”) as far back as c.1600 — that used the smoke image differently. Linguistic scholars see these older formulations as related precedents that foreshadow the later, standardized go up in smoke figurative usage.

Comparative and Cross-Language Evidence

Many languages use the same smoke → disappearance metaphor (French partir en fumée, Italian andare in fumo, German in Rauch aufgehen). This cross-linguistic recurrence suggests a shared human tendency to map the perceptual image of smoke dispersing onto abstract notions of failure, loss, or disappearance—strengthening the plausibility of the standard literal→figurative pathway.

Assessment of Evidence and Likely Origin Country

• Language family/evidence: English. The modern standardized idiom as used in headlines and idiomatic dictionaries is English in origin (attested in British and American print).
• Likely country of first figurative fixation: hard to prove to the level of a single nation, but the documentation places the figurative stabilization in Anglophone press and lexicography in the early 1930s (United Kingdom / United States / other English-language press). The available etymological summary gives the figurative coinage date c.1933.

End, Failure