live and die by

English

Verb

live and die by (third-person singular simple present lives and dies by, present participle living and dying by, simple past and past participle lived and died by)

1. (idiomatic) Be completely reliant upon.
   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     The e-commerce industry lives and dies by metrics, a few of which give us some grasp over this phenomenon.