game, set, match

English

Alternative forms

• game, set and match

Pronunciation

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Phrase

game, set, match

1. (sports, tennis) Victory at the conclusion of a tennis match.
   • 1915, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 13, in Left Tackle Thayer:

     "Game, set and match to Byrd!" announced Westcott above the applause. "Byrd wins the School Championship!"

2. (idiomatic, by extension) An expression indicating finality, announcing that a series of events—usually involving some form of rivalry—has reached a conclusion.
   • 2003 February 19, Christopher Buckley, “Opinion: Another March of Folly?”, in New York Times, retrieved 9 June 2015:

     A few years after that, Mikhail Gorbachev effectively surrendered in a cold war that had lasted almost four decades, and in a few more years the Berlin Wall came down. Game, set, match.

   • 2010 July 6, Mark Thompson, “Hyping Hypersonic Missiles”, in Time, retrieved 9 June 2015:

     The atom bomb: U.S. 1, U.S.S.R. 0. Then came Sputnik, and the score was tied at 1 apiece. Then Apollo and putting a man on the moon — game, set, match.

   • 2014 September 30, Dave Altavilla, “The Most Important Promised Feature Of Windows 10”, in Forbes, retrieved 9 June 2015:

     This is game, set and match for Microsoft. . . . [I]f Microsoft can pull off one operating system and one companion App Store that functions seamlessly across all device types from smartphones, to tablets, notebooks, hybrid 2-in-1 devices and desktops, all with common apps that just work, they could very well one-up the competition.

Translations

tennis

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: please add this translation if you can

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• Finnish: peli, erä ja ottelu
• French: jeu, set et match
• German: Spiel, Satz und Sieg
• Russian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: please add this translation if you can

an idiomatic expression for finality

• Maori: kua kēhi