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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “His last film was a damp squib at the box office.” My comments: The film bombed at the box office, failing to sell as many tickets as it was expected to. Here, bombed means it flopped or failed, i.e. it failed to explode like a good bomb should. Strange is the English language you may say but it is correct to say that a film bombed at the box office. That is similar to saying that the film was a damp squib. A squib is a piece of small firecracker or dynamite tube. People who’ve played with firecrackers during the Spring Festival in this country have no problem understanding what a damp squib is and feels like. That is, instead of giving a sharp and resounding explosion, a cracking sound as a matter of fact (which is why they’re called firecrackers), a damp squib either fails to ignite at all or lets out a feeble fizz or a faint whisper of “purr”. This piece of failed firecracker is a dud, or what people call a “damp squib”, metaphorically a disappointment, a damper of hopes and excitement, an anticlimax. Damp squibs are, in the main, the result of storage in, yes, damp (wet) conditions. Dynamics are traditionally made of black gun powder, consisting of, among other things, charcoal. As we all know, you cannot lit a fire if the charcoal is wet. Hence, squibs that are damp won’t explode. Hence and therefore, damp squibs become synonymous with anything that fails to work properly, anything that’s not up to expectation and anything that turns out to be a disappointment especially after much fanfare has previously been raised about it. | 
