bigtime

• big-time

big +‎ time

bigtime (comparative more bigtime, superlative most bigtime)

1. Of major significance or importance.
   • 1918, Edna Ferber, “That’s Marriage”, in Cheerful—By Request‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., page 169:

     Wait till you see your name in two-foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the country.

   • 1954 May, Richard Wilson, “Back to Julie”, in Galaxy Science Fiction, volume 8, number 2, page 69:

     Krasnow is a big-time operator; I’ve always been, you might say, in the peanut end of the game.

   • 1959, Marc Brody, Low Dive for Lola, page i. 9:

     'On the level, honey, I have an all-time, big-time need for coffee.'

   • 1997 July, Jennifer Zajac, “Get some major league fun at Little League dollars”, in Money, volume 26, number 7, page 158:

     Tired of shelling out bigtime bucks to see overpaid major leaguers with underwhelming stats and attitudes to match, baseball fans by the thousands are rediscovering a more relaxed—and cheaper—version of the national pastime: the minor leagues.

   • 2006 April 23, “A twist in the tale”, in The Observer:

     With a previous conviction in 1954 for receiving tins of corned beef, Betchley was hardly bigtime.

• small-time

• big time

bigtime (not comparable)

1. To a significant degree.
   • 2018 March 15, Bill Press, “‘Lamb the Sham’ beats ‘Trump the Chump’”, in Chicago Tribune:

     This was the first test for that message -- and it failed bigtime.

bigtime (plural bigtimes)

1. Alternative form of big time
   • 1986 May 30, Larry Stewart, “It’s Time to Replace the Talking Heads With Racing Cars”, in Los Angeles Times:

     The Financial News Network’s SCORE program […] hit the bigtime last Monday by offering live coverage of Snow Chief’s victory in the Jersey Derby […]

   • 2010 May 20, Roy Wilkinson, “How Judas Priest invented heavy metal”, in The Guardian:

     Thirty years ago Rob Halford led Judas Priest, and heavy metal itself, out of the Midlands and into the bigtime.