to go to pot
3
8.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
ir a la ruina
- Mrs. Danford, I say over and over, you're gonna have to get yourself better, or that girl's gonna go to pot.
Not even an admixture of desire or the whole thing goes to pot, right?
- Not even an admixture of desire or the whole thing goes to pot, right?
- But then later on when his wife dies, he really goes to pot.
- They think of themselves as living in a culture that in many respects has gone to pot and they're not quite sure why.
- And that's what drives reuse when we're addicted, even though we can objectively see that our life is going to pot.
Examples
-
Let's you and me muck along together, eh, and let the rest of the world go to pot.
-
He was the kind of guy who looked like a wimp in high school, Jake thought, but now at reunions he looked youthful and handsome while the others had gone to pot.
Fiction book (1995) -
England is going to pot.
-
Business will go to pot.
-
That is before the whole neighborhood went to pot.
-
I'm afraid things have gone to pot around here since you left.
Fiction book (2002) -
It's fairly evident they were in the process of leaving before things went to pot.
-
No question: our repertoire of olfactory receptor genes has gone to pot.
Academic text (2006) -
If you've not saved and you've let your body go to pot, then you'd better hope to have someone other than the government to mooch off of.
Blog text (28) -
Since the new management took over, the quality of service at the restaurant has really gone to pot.
Synonyms
32
2.1
Become unsafe to eat or use because it has spoiled
17
4.1
To become bad or fail, for example a relationship
9
9.9
To go very badly and fail completely
7
6.6
To be completely ruined and lose all value
6
6.1
To become much worse or ruined
2
7.3
To become untidy and overgrown and lose quality
1
9.9
Completely ruined or wasted and no longer useful
Antonyms
How Ruined
Surface Forms
Morphology
go + to + pot
Although 'go' signals a change of state, the literal constituent 'pot' (a cooking vessel) gives no clear cue to decline or ruin, so a learner who only knows the parts would not predict the idiomatic sense. The phrase is historical/idiomatic and its meaning is not compositionally derived nor cross-linguistically transparent, making it unpredictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
The idiom go to pot may come from old cooking. One popular story says that when food or small goods went bad, people threw them into a cooking pot for animals, so they were no longer useful. That's why go to pot means 'to become ruined or fall into bad condition'.