Idiom
deep six
Meaning
To discard, get rid of, or cancel; to completely put an end to something.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“We decided to deep six the old project.”
“The manager told us to deep six the marketing plan because it was too expensive.”
“The director had to deep six the final scene of the movie because the lead actor refused to perform the dangerous stunt.”
“After the board reviewed the failing quarterly results, they voted to deep six the entire initiative to save the company.”
Examples
simple
“We decided to deep six the old project.”
contextual
“The manager told us to deep six the marketing plan because it was too expensive.”
“The director had to deep six the final scene of the movie because the lead actor refused to perform the dangerous stunt.”
complex
“After the board reviewed the failing quarterly results, they voted to deep six the entire initiative to save the company.”
Origin
Attested as a noun by 1929, the term likely originates from the nautical cry "by the deep six," used when a sounding line recorded a depth of six fathoms. At thirty-six feet, the water was considered sufficiently deep to ensure that anything thrown overboard would remain unrecoverable. The transition to a verb, signifying the act of discarding or destroying something, is recorded from the 1950s.
A secondary, though unproven, theory suggests the phrase may refer to the traditional six-foot depth of a grave. Whether the destination is the seabed or the cemetery, the distance remains the same: six units of measurement intended to keep the contents from resurfacing.
Key words
Related idioms
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