Idiom
come up with snake eyes
Meaning
To fail to come up with anything; to get nowhere.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I searched everywhere for my keys but came up with snake eyes.”
“He checks the mailbox every day but always comes up with snake eyes.”
“She looks for a solution in the manual and comes up with snake eyes.”
“We spent all afternoon brainstorming new marketing ideas, but we came up with snake eyes.”
“The police interviewed every witness at the scene, but they came up with snake eyes regarding the suspect's identity.”
“I tried to find a cheap flight for the holiday weekend, but every travel website came up with snake eyes.”
“Despite an exhaustive investigation into the company's financial records, the auditors came up with snake eyes regarding the missing funds.”
Examples
simple
“I searched everywhere for my keys but came up with snake eyes.”
“He checks the mailbox every day but always comes up with snake eyes.”
“She looks for a solution in the manual and comes up with snake eyes.”
contextual
“We spent all afternoon brainstorming new marketing ideas, but we came up with snake eyes.”
“The police interviewed every witness at the scene, but they came up with snake eyes regarding the suspect's identity.”
“I tried to find a cheap flight for the holiday weekend, but every travel website came up with snake eyes.”
complex
“Despite an exhaustive investigation into the company's financial records, the auditors came up with snake eyes regarding the missing funds.”
Origin
From come up with + snake eyes, a term denoting a pair of dice showing a value of one on each face. The name derives from the visual resemblance of the two single pips to the eyes of a serpent. In many dice games, such as craps, this roll constitutes an immediate loss for the player, a failure which the idiom preserves.
Key words
Related idioms
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