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Reader question: Please explain “bet the farm” in this sentence: However, I would not bet the farm that the housing market would always be going up. My comments: Here, the speaker isn’t so sure that housing prices will always be going up. If he were very sure, he would be betting the farm on that. Betting the farm? This homespun American idiom might indeed have been invented, or at least inspired by farmers, judging purely from its down-to-earth plainness and simplicity, along with the unmistakable foolhardiness that’s in it. When people play the betting game, they tend to bet a small sum when they’re unsure. And when they are sure, they place a bigger bet. Human nature. When farmers play, more or less of the same thing happens, of course. When they’re unsure about it, they put, say, two cents on it, saying for example “for my two cents, I bet the housing market in New York will collapse within a week.” Clearly, they don’t know what they’re talking about here. When they’re certain about something, however, they’ll be much bolder. They’ll raise the stake, as some people say, or up the ante, as others say. For example, they’ll bet a chicken or all of their chickens in the backyard that it’ll rain tomorrow. And when they’re really sure about something, they’ll do something crazy, like, betting the house that the family live in or the farm, meaning the whole farm they own. | 
