Thanos-snap

English

Alternative forms

Thanos snap

Etymology

A reference to the 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War, in which the character Thanos turns half the population of the universe into dust by snapping his fingers.

Verb

Thanos-snap (third-person singular simple present Thanos-snaps, present participle Thanos-snapping, simple past and past participle Thanos-snapped)

(informal) To make (something) suddenly disappear.
- 2019 September 14, Jacob Shamsian, Walt Hickey, “If everyone except for Biden, Bernie, and Warren dropped out of the 2020 race right now, Biden would be the clear loser”, in Business Insider‎^[1], archived from the original on 2022-10-22:
  If we Thanos-snapped Harris, Buttigieg, Booker, O'Rourke, Yang, Klobuchar, Castro, Bennet, Bullock, Delaney, Gabbard, Ryan, Williamson, Steyer, and De Blasio out of existence, here's what the field would look like, according to the polls we've conducted this summer: […]
- 2019 December 20, John O'Connor, “10 Legitimately Evil Things Link Has Done (That Everyone Ignores)”, in The Gamer‎^[2], archived from the original on 2023-07-07:
  Link's ship crashes on a paradise-like island where he's told by an owl that the only way he can get out is by awakening the egg atop the mountain. That's the game. Pretty simple and innocent-sounding... until you realize at the end of the game that awakening the egg basically Thanos snaps the whole island. Every single friend you make, resident, and happy person in paradise dead and gone forever. That's a wee bit dark.
- 2020 January 14, Ryan McCaffrey, “What Spider-Man Leaving the MCU Means (Or Doesn't) for Games”, in IGN‎^[3], archived from the original on 2022-05-22:
  But some of those good honeymoon-period vibes got Thanos-snapped away from PlayStation and Insomniac in an instant when Sony and Disney wouldn't play nice.
- 2020 March 26, Patrick Reis, “Ask an Expert on the Fall of Rome: Are We F-cked?”, in Rolling Stone‎^[4], New York, N.Y.: Penske Media Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-12-06:
  You don't want to have to "Thanos snap" half the population out of existence in order to get to a point where the peasants are doing better.
- 2021 May 20, Andy Chalk, “Overwatch 2 PvP will be 5v5 with only one Tank per team”, in PC Gamer‎^[5], archived from the original on 2023-05-27:
  Reaction to the changes is decidedly mixed at this point: Some players are eager to try a more structured take on Overwatch PvP, while others predict the end of tank relevance: As redditor kooog put it, "OWL tanks just got Thanos snapped."