Idiom Breakdown

eat someone's lunch

//ˈit ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/ / /ˈiːt ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/ / /-ˈlʌnʃ//

USSLANG American English

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Definition

To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of.

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Possibly from the idea of a stronger or quicker person snatching away and eating another person’s lunch before they can consume it.

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"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 would eat our lunch!"
""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 on eating our lunch in this next century.""
"It seemed inevitable: Slither was going to eat our lunch unless 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 that we knew could put us out of business (if it really existed)."
"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 is eating their lunch."
"Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are, indeed, eating traditional comedy’s lunch lately when it comes to funny characters."

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