Word.ws English Dictionary

go through the mill

go through the mill verb: to experience the suffering or discipline necessary to bring one to a certain degree of knowledge or skill, or to a certain mental state.

Verb

go through the mill (third-person singular simple present goes through the mill, present participle going through the mill, simple past went through the mill, past participle gone through the mill)

  1. (idiomatic) To experience the suffering or discipline necessary to bring one to a certain degree of knowledge or skill, or to a certain mental state.
  2. (UK, obsolete, slang) To go through bankruptcy.
    • All know the high estimation debtors held the Act 1861, by the number who went "through the mill" at the close of 1869.1877, The Accountant, volume 3, page 3

Forms of go through the mill

third-person singular presentgoes through the mill
present participlegoing through the mill
pastwent through the mill
past participlegone through the mill

Questions about go through the mill

What does go through the mill mean?
Go through the mill means to experience the suffering or discipline necessary to bring one to a certain degree of knowledge or skill, or to a certain mental state.
What part of speech is go through the mill?
Go through the mill is a verb.
What is the past tense of go through the mill?
The past tense of go through the mill is went through the mill.

Words near go through the mill in the dictionary

  1. go through great lengths
  2. go through hell
  3. go through hoops
  4. go through the attitudes
  5. go through the gears
  6. go through the mill
  7. go through the motions
  8. go through the trouble
  9. go through with
  10. go to
  11. go to bat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go through the mill (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-go through the mill.ogg.

Cite this entry: “go through the mill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_through_the_mill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.