Meaning
A colloquial, chiefly British euphemism meaning to die. The it is a placeholder, as in kick the bucket or pop one's clogs, and the tone is wry or offhand rather than solemn: The Free Dictionary's example is 'Old Jack was over 90 when he snuffed it'. Informal and can sound flippant about real bereavement; chiefly British, though understood everywhere. Related to snuff out, which carries the same candle metaphor. This site already catalogues kick the bucket - snuff it is its deadpan British cousin. Regional use: Chiefly British English.
Origin
Behind the phrase stands the candle. The verb snuff, 'to cut or pinch off the burned part of a candle wick', is Middle English - mid-15th-century snoffen, from the late-14th-century noun snoffe, a word of unknown origin - and Etymonline records the transferred meaning 'to die' from 1865, with 'to kill' from 1932. Life as a candle snuffed out is the image, the same metaphor that gives snuff out for extinguishing. The idiom is labelled British English, slang and humorous by The Free Dictionary's partner idiom guide, and McGraw-Hill's American slang dictionary glosses it simply 'to die'. Its most quotable outings include the 1975 script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whose instruction for the Holy Hand Grenade ends 'lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it', and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), where Ron describes Thestrals as the creatures 'you can't see unless you've watched someone snuff it'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- snuffed it
- snuffing it
Usage Examples
- Uncle Ray smoked forty a day and still had not snuffed it by ninety.
- If the parachutes had been packed badly, we would all have snuffed it somewhere over Devon.
- The goldfish snuffed it over the weekend, and we held a brief funeral by the garden fence.