LIKE IT’S GOING OUT OF STYLE

Idiomatic Meaning: Enthusiastically, rapidly to an excessive degree

Literal Meaning: As if the supply or fashion regarding something will soon be gone, so one has to get the most out of it.

Usage: Formal and informal, spoken American and British English. When using “as if” instead of “like”, especially in a formal sense, one should use the subjunctive, e.g. “as if it were…”

Origin: 20^th Century, British and American English – The concept expressed by this simile phrase is very old, biblical in fact. The new and old testaments both have admonitions about being wary of the future and/or acting as if it didn’t exist. But the idiomatic use of the word “style” is strictly modern. The British version of this phrase is “like it’s going out of fashion”. Another version is “like there was no tomorrow”, also to “do something as if one’s life depended on it”, gives the same sense.

Why is this funny? In the cartoon we see a kind of wild party going on in the lobby of a fancy building. People are standing around a table drinking. There is a punch bowl on the table and we learn that the contents are “spiked” punch. Punch is usually a non-alcoholic beverage, but when it gets spiked, it gets alcohol and drinking too much of it will get you drunk. On top of the table we also see an older man dancing around and drinking. Turns out he’s a judge who has had too much punch to drink and is now drunk and acting crazy. He thought that drinking to excess was not going to be as popular as either it once was or as he thinks it should be. He wants to drink enough just in case they run out of punch or in case people disapprove too much, that’s why he’s drinking “as if it were going out of style.”

Sample Sentence: Phil too all of us out to eat last night; he was spending money “like it was going out of style.”