drop like flies

1. 1.

   rapidly collapse, die, or drop out in large numbers

   “the contestants dropped like flies when the thermometer hit one hundred degrees”

   Broaderbreak down

Questions about drop like flies

What does drop like flies mean?

drop like flies means "rapidly collapse, die, or drop out in large numbers".

Is drop like flies a common word?

drop like flies is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.