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by Kate Woodford

We’ve all had the experience of looking forward to something and expecting it to be great but finding, when it happens, that it’s a disappointment. Conversely, we all know what it’s like to have low expectations of something but find that it’s much better than we were expecting. This post looks at language in this area and includes both single words and phrases.

Starting on a positive note, something or someone that lives up to expectations / hype / a reputation, etc. is as good as we’d expected:

“Did the festival live up to your expectations?” “Absolutely, it was brilliant.”

Sadly, the film didn’t quite live up to the hype.

If something exceeds your expectations, it is better than you expected it to be. You can also say that something goes or is beyond your expectations:

The event in many ways exceeded our expectations.

The quality of the food went well beyond my expectations.

A rather formal way to say that something proves to be better than you were expecting is that you are pleasantly surprised by it:

I think we were all pleasantly surprised by the standard of the acting.

On the other hand, someone or something that lets you down disappoints you by failing to do what they agreed or were expected to do, and a letdown (informal) is something that disappoints you because it isn’t as good as you thought it would be:

We were relying on him and he really let us down.

If it’s waterproof boots you need, these ones won’t let you down.

I had such high expectations of the movie that it was bound to be a letdown.

If something falls short, it fails to reach the desired standard, level, or amount, therefore causing disappointment:

The committee had fallen short of its stated goal.

State tax revenues fell short by $350 million because of the slowing economy.

Something or someone that is not all/everything it’s/they’re cracked up to be is not as good as people often say. This is an informal phrase:

I’ve been to his restaurant a couple of times, and I’m afraid it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Moving on to nouns, a non-event is an event that is much less exciting, impressive, or popular than was expected. In UK English, this can also be called, informally, a damp squib:

The rally was a complete non-event with only thirty or forty people in attendance.

After so much anticipation, the final turned out to be something of a damp squib.

Meanwhile, an anticlimax is an event that is disappointing because it is less exciting than you expected it to be or because it happens just after a much more exciting event. The adjective is anticlimactic:

I worried that after all the excitement, the event itself would be an anticlimax.

The ending of the book felt anticlimactic, and I was left rather disappointed.

That’s it for the language around disappointment (and its opposite). And I hope the week ahead exceeds your expectations!