Meaning
In a state of ruin, failure, or serious difficulty: a marriage on the rocks, a business on the rocks. Separately, of a drink, served over ice cubes, as in a whisky on the rocks. The two senses are related only by the joking resemblance of ice to rocks, and context always tells them apart. Casual and neutral in the drinks sense; grave and stock-in-trade for headlines in the ruin sense. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The ruin sense came first. It is a figurative application of a ship striking rocks and breaking up: etymonline dates 'on the rocks' meaning likely to be ruined or wrecked to 1889, describing it as a figurative use with reference to ships. The drinking sense, a liquor poured over ice, is American and later, recorded from 1946; it plays on the look of ice cubes in the glass rather than on shipwreck, as Wiktionary notes, the ice sense having arisen because ice resembles rocks. The shipwreck image is therefore the original route into English, and the barroom sense is a mid-twentieth-century wordplay that has since become so common that some speakers now meet the metaphor through the drink first.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a marriage on the rocks
- a whisky on the rocks
- be on the rocks
- go on the rocks
Usage Examples
- Their marriage was on the rocks long before the move abroad.
- The chain's expansion plans went on the rocks when credit dried up.
- She ordered a Scotch on the rocks and studied the menu.