Word.ws English Dictionary

too big to fail

too big to fail adjective: deemed too important to the economy or polity to be allowed to “fail”, that is to be liquidated or to go bankrupt.

Adjective

too big to fail

  1. Deemed too important to the economy or polity to be allowed to “fail”, that is to be liquidated or to go bankrupt.
    • The fact, which surely everybody knows and hardly anybody ventures to state, is that the stability of our great banks--and all our banking system which now matters a tittle consists of great banks--is based not on the supply of gold in their vaults, nor on the reserve in the Bank of England, but on...1912, Fabian Society, Fabian Tract No. 164, "Gold and State Banking: A Study in the Economics of Monopoly"
    • The Trunk's too big to fail. Too many investors. He'll get more money, keep the system going this side of disaster, then let it collapse.2004, Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
    Synonyms:
    TBTF

Synonyms of too big to fail

Words formed from too big to fail

Questions about too big to fail

What does too big to fail mean?
Too big to fail means deemed too important to the economy or polity to be allowed to “fail”, that is to be liquidated or to go bankrupt.
What part of speech is too big to fail?
Too big to fail is an adjective.

Words near too big to fail in the dictionary

  1. too bad
  2. too bad, so sad
  3. too big for one's boots
  4. too big for one's breeches
  5. too big for one's britches
  6. too big to fail
  7. too big to jail
  8. too clever by half
  9. too close for comfort
  10. too close to call
  11. too close to the sun

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: too big to fail (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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