eat someone's lunch

Meaning: (idiomatic,chieflyUS,slang)Tobestordefeatsomeonethoroughly; tomake short work of.Synonyms:eat someone for breakfast,have someone for breakfast;see alsoThesaurus:defeat2006October 2, “A Disastrous ‘Upgrade’: My Boss Insisted that Creating a Windows Version of Our DOS App would Ensure Our Future”, in Steve Fox, editor,InfoWorld, volume28, number40, San Francisco, Calif.: InfoWorld Publishing Co.,International Data Group,→ISSN,→OCLC,page52, column 1:So in a classic it-ain't-broke-so-let's-fix-it-anyway move, some of our managers and salespeople began complaining that it wasn't written for Windows.[…]If we didn't rewrite for Windows, they insisted, our competitors wouldeat our lunch!2010November 18, Kate Sheppard, “Outgoing GOPer Slams Climate Denying Colleagues”, inMother Jones‎[1], San Francisco, Calif.: Foundation for National Progress,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe originalon18 August 2023:"I would also suggest to my free enterprise colleagues—especially conservatives here—whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey[i.e., climate change], what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don’t," the South Carolina Republican[Bob Inglis]said in his opening remarks. "And they plan oneating our lunchin this next century."2011,Josh Linkner, “Gaining the Keys to a Creative Mind and Culture”, inDisciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass,Wiley,→ISBN, step 2 (Prepare),page102:It seemed inevitable: Slither was going toeat our lunchunless we upped our game and out-Slithered Slither. But here's the thing, The Slither Corporation doesn't actually exist. It's our fictive nemesis, our imaginary bad guys. Rather than battling a poorly performing company, we went up against our worst enemy—the company thatwe knewcould put us out of business (if it really existed).2021December 13,Molly Ball,Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Time 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk”, inTime‎[2], New York, N.Y.:Time Inc.,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe originalon14 May 2024:Today, thanks in large part to[Elon] Musk's pace-setting, auto companies from VW to Nissan are jostling to invest billions in electric vehicles. Their about-face is driven less by altruism than by a dawning realization that Musk iseating their lunch.2023September 27, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Weirdos Living Inside Our Phones”, inThe Atlantic‎[3], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe originalon30 December 2023:Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are, indeed,eating traditional comedy’s lunchlately when it comes to funny characters.

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