big one

See also: Big One

English

Alternative forms

• big 'un

Noun

big one (plural big ones)

1. (colloquial) Something important; (with 'the') the most important one, (especially sports) the big game, the big play.
   • 1997 June 26, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter XI, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter; 1), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

     Wood agreed. ‘This is it.’
     ‘The big one,’ said Fred Weasley.
     ‘The one we’ve all been waiting for,’ said George.
     ‘We know Oliver’s speech by heart,’ Fred told Harry.

2. (US, colloquial) One hundred or one thousand dollars.
   • 1988, Arthur Allen Cohen, Acts of Theft, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 166:

     “Little Caesar stopped by. You guessed it. Edward G. Robinson himself, and paid four big ones for the seated figure. […] ”

   • 2002 September 23, Hunter S. Thompson, “Dr. Thompson Is Back from Beirut”, reprinted in Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History from the Sports Desk, Simon and Schuster (2004), →ISBN, page 144:

     He smiled faintly and dropped 100 big ones down on the bar.

   • 2002, George Avgerakis, Desktop Video Studio Bible: Producing Video, DVD, and Websites for Profit, McGraw-Hill Professional, →ISBN, page 364:

     You could spend the five big ones and the client could get downsized to a Jiffy Lube janitor the next week.

3. (US, colloquial) A dollar.
   • 2007, Sam Venable, Someday I May Find Honest Work: A Newspaper Humorist's Life, University of Tennessee Press, →ISBN, page 157:

     The visitors won't know the difference because […] after they’ve dropped five hundred big ones at the factory outlet stores, an extra dollar will seem like the bargain of the century.

   • 2007, Wilson Marsh, Ouiji (novella), in Six After Midnight, Steel Moon Publishing, →ISBN, page 78:

     “I spent seventy-five big ones to have my computer crash.”

   • 2008, Daniel Edward Craig, Murder at Hotel Cinema, Llewellyn Worldwide, →ISBN, page 101:

     “ […] I paid 150,000 big ones for her to kill herself in front of the biggest wigs in Hollywood? […] ”

Coordinate terms

• big two, Big Three, Big Four, big five, big six, big eight

Noun

the big one (uncountable)

1. (slang, originally US, euphemistic) Death.

   to bite the big one, buy the big one ― to die

Further reading

• “big one n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present
• Eric Partridge (2005), “big one”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A–I), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 151.

Anagrams

• Boeing, biogen