Word.ws English Dictionary

in the bag

in the bag prepositional phrase: of a desirable thing, certain or extremely likely to occur.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic, slang) Of a desirable thing, certain or extremely likely to occur.
    • Near-synonyms: assured, cinched, guaranteed, on ice, inevitable
    • 3-0 up with 5 minutes to go...we've got the win in the bag.
  2. (idiomatic, slang) Intoxicated; drunk.
    • His wife and his three girls had gone over to Gates Falls to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, and Uncle George was pretty much in the bag, just like the Drunk Man Who Had to Go to Jail.1984, Stephen King, Gramma
    • "It's like the way it is for an alcoholic when he can't get a drink.... He bumps into more things now than he did when he was in the bag."2004, Les Visible, The Dark Splendour, →ISBN, page 97

Examples of in the bag in a sentence

  • "We mustn't count our eggs before they're hatched, but I think it's in the bag," he said.1954, Charles Percy Snow, The New Men, published 2001, →ISBN, page 61:
  • Some scientists thought that a reduction of electromagnetics to mechanics was more or less in the bag.1986, Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The MIT Press, →ISBN, pages 12-13:

Synonyms of in the bag

All synonyms of in the bag

Questions about in the bag

What does in the bag mean?
In the bag means of a desirable thing, certain or extremely likely to occur.
How do you use in the bag in a sentence?
"We mustn't count our eggs before they're hatched, but I think it's in the bag," he said.
What part of speech is in the bag?
In the bag is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in the bag in the dictionary

  1. in the arms of Morpheus
  2. in the arms of Murphy
  3. in the article of death
  4. in the ascendant
  5. in the back seat
  6. in the bag
  7. in the ballpark
  8. in the bargain
  9. in the barrel
  10. in the bed
  11. in the bedroom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the bag (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-in the bag.ogg.

Cite this entry: “in the bag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_bag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.