big ticket

Noun

big ticket (plural big tickets)

1. (figuratively) Something of major importance; the crux.
   • Some leave the field of play for a while to come back mostly for the big ticket moments.2013, Future Foundation, The Big Lie, page 22
   • My own notes (of November 10, 2003) as chair of SSHWC reveal the “big ticket” of ideas that would guide our deliberations: striking the right tone of our argument (i.e., no militancy), constantly reaffirming that a big part of TCPS is a good document (often using footnote references to TCPS) and...2016, Martin Tolich, Qualitative Ethics in Practice
2. (figuratively) A high price; a large expense.
   • So we've got, like in my subcommittee, we've the space station, but overall in appropriations we have the space station, we have super collider, we have the mapping of the genetic code, and all three of these are really big, and then there is the superconductor, but all three are really big...1989, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on HUD-Independent Agencies, Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent...
   • However, we do want to assume that the big ticket is large enough relative to the bundle of resources committed to it so that positive saving on balance ( more saving beforehand than borrowing after ) will be required for feasibility .1992, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics Partha Dasgupta, Partha Dasgupta, Douglas Gale, Economic Analysis of Markets and Games
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see big, ticket.
   • I was driving and stopped at a red light, but unfortunately I had crossed the stop line by a faction of an inch (or, may be by a few inches), then the rookie traffic officer came to me with his big ticket pad. And wrote me a big ticket.2009, Ajay Ray, A Random Journey of Mind, page 86