Word.ws English Dictionary

cannot make it

cannot make it verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cannot, make it.

Verb

cannot make it

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cannot, make it.
  2. (Singapore, colloquial, idiomatic, stative) Cannot reach satisfactory or expected standards or do something competently; describes someone in a hopeless situation.
    • A noble effort but somehow the only words that came to mind were “cannot make it, lah”.2006 July 20, Zul Othman, Today, quoted in Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English, Singapore: Mediacorp Press, page 37
    • […] “it never ended preliminarily at ‘he cannot make it’, […] it was always ‘let's do this or that to help him’.”2023, Dan Goodley, Kuansong Victor Zhuang, Meng Ee Wong, Not Without Us: Perspectives on Disability and Inclusion in Singapore, →ISBN

Forms of cannot make it

alternative formCMI

Questions about cannot make it

What does cannot make it mean?
Cannot make it means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cannot, make it.
What part of speech is cannot make it?
Cannot make it is a verb.

Words near cannot make it in the dictionary

  1. cannot away with
  2. cannot but
  3. cannot help
  4. cannot help but
  5. cannot live with them, cannot live without them
  6. cannot make it
  7. cannot-link
  8. cannots
  9. cannott
  10. canns
  11. Cannstatt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cannot make it (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cannot make it.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cannot_make_it. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.