A: Did you get the job you applied for?

    B: Not yet, but it’s in the bag.

    Note: This idiom means “virtually secured — as good as in one’s possession.” It is American and came into being in the early 20th century. It is slightly predated by an Australian/New Zealand version of “in the bag” which had a different meaning. That was in use by 1900 and is defined in a later citation: Sidney John Baker’s “The Australian Language,” 1945 — A horse set to lose a race is said to be in the bag. Of course, that isn’t the meaning of the phrase as we currently understand it. The current version was coined because of a tradition of the New York Giants baseball team. The team would carry a ball bag off the field when the team was in the lead, superstitiously thinking that the game was “in the bag” and couldn’t be lost.