fall victim

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fall victim (third-person singular simple present falls victim, present participle falling victim, simple past fell victim, past participle fallen victim)

1. (idiomatic, intransitive) to suffer as a result of external circumstances or someone else's actions
   • 1961, The Horace M. Albright Conservation Lectureship:

     Obviously, birds are very vulnerable to human persecution at such passage sites, where hecatombs of raptors fall victim every year to human greed or pleasure. Examples of important areas for seasonal mass migration and / or resting of […]

   • 1989, The Stalin Phenomenon, Stosius Incorporated/Advent Books Division:

     F. Platten led a group of several score Swiss workers with their families (many of them subsequently also fell victim to repression) who had organized an agricultural co-operative not far from Simbirsk, Lenin's birthplace, back in 1923.

   • 2024 January 30, Phil McNulty, “Nottingham Forest 1-2 Arsenal: Gunners in title race after they close gap to leaders Liverpool”, in BBC Sport‎:

     Arsenal also have a score to settle with Liverpool after losing 2-0 at home in the recent FA Cup third-round tie, when they had so many chances to score before almost inevitably falling victim to two late sucker-punches.