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going up in smoke

going up in smoke is the present participle and gerund of go up in smoke.

Meaning of go up in smoke

Verb

go up in smoke (third-person singular simple present goes up in smoke, present participle going up in smoke, simple past went up in smoke, past participle gone up in smoke)

(literally) To catch fire and burn.

Synonyms:

go up in flames, catch fire, catch on fire, combust, conflagrate, fire, ignite, light, spunk, take fire
(broadly, idiomatic) To be completely ruined, devastated, or reduced to nothingness.
- Near-synonym: evaporate
Synonyms:

burn down, burn up, come to nothing, end in smoke, go up in flames, evaporate

Questions about going up in smoke

What is going up in smoke the present participle and gerund of?: Going up in smoke is the present participle and gerund of go up in smoke.

Words near going up in smoke in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: going up in smoke (page history and authors); go up in smoke (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “going up in smoke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_up_in_smoke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.