Meaning
To fail to take advantage of an opportunity, or to act too late to benefit from it. A second, less common sense is to fail to understand or grasp something. Informal and neutral; often tinged with regret or reproach, as when a discount, a trend, or a deadline passes someone by. Informal; often regretful or reproachful in tone. Regional use: General English.
Origin
Despite the sailor flavour, this is a general transport metaphor rather than a specific naval practice: it alludes to arriving at the pier after a scheduled sailing has left. Christine Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches says the analogy to missing a scheduled transport has been drawn since about 1900, and the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms says the expression was applied more widely from the 1920s; Wiktionary likewise calls it popular since the 1920s. The bus variant is old enough that Neville Chamberlain said in an April 1940 speech, of Hitler's invasion of Norway, that 'Hitler has missed the bus'. The secondary sense, 'to fail to understand something', is dated to the mid-1900s.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- miss the boat on
- miss the bus
- miss the ferry
- miss the last boat
Usage Examples
- Tickets were cheapest in March, and anyone who hesitated missed the boat.
- The retailer missed the boat on online sales and spent a decade catching up.
- If you don't apply before Friday, you'll miss the boat on the internship programme.