Miss the Boat

An obviously literal image, the ship departing without you, but its exact history is surprisingly murky. Some sources place the literal sense as far back as the 18th century, while the earliest confirmed figurative use, meaning a missed opportunity of any kind, only shows up in the early 1900s, during the peak era of passenger sea travel. It likely developed independently among English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic, carried by sailors' everyday language into wider public use, but no single confirmed coining moment has ever been identified.