to go to hell in a handbasket
8
9.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
ir al garete
- Things were going to hell in a handbasket.
- the world is going to hell in a handbasket
- the country is going to hell in a handbasket
- Things are going to hell in a handbasket
Like one of the things you have to do when things are just going to hell in a handbasket, let's say, is you got to also shrink your temporal horizon.
- Like one of the things you have to do when things are just going to hell in a handbasket, let's say, is you got to also shrink your temporal horizon.
- Now, even if the world go goes to hell in a handbasket, which you might well do, you know, you internally, you've found home.
Examples
-
And this game immediately went to hell in a handbasket, too.
Blog text (30) -
The world is going to hell in a handbasket, thanks to your President Bush.
Blog text (5) -
The whole country is going to hell in a handbasket.
-
And we wonder why our nation is going to hell in a handbasket?
Blog text (17) -
The military has been slowly going to hell in a handbasket.
Blog text (14) -
I'm trying here, but my political career is going to hell in a handbasket.
-
If we don't work together, this country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Blog text (24) -
The whole country's going to hell in a handbasket.
Fiction book (1995) -
I tell you what, honey, this country’s going to hell in a handbasket.
Fiction book (1996) -
The whole country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Synonyms
9
9.9
To go very badly and fail completely
6
6.1
To become much worse or ruined
1
7.9
To fail completely
To suddenly become chaotic and very messy
Antonyms
How Bad
- Informal
8
9.3
- Informal
6
6.1
- Informal
37
3.9
390
2.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
go + to + hell + in + a + handbasket
Although components like 'go' and 'hell' signal a negative outcome, the specific sense of rapid, out-of-control decline encoded by the full phrase is not predictably derivable from the literal words—'handbasket' is rare and the image is non-compositional. This is a culture-specific idiom whose precise meaning (speed and uncontrollability of deterioration) would not be clear to a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.
Etymology
The idiom go to hell in a handbasket may come from old pictures that show someone sitting in a small handbasket and being carried straight to hell. That clear, strange image shows an easy, fast trip to disaster, so the phrase means 'to get much worse very quickly'.