Word.ws English Dictionary

goes south

goes south is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go south.

Meaning of go south

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To become unfavorable; to decrease; to take a turn for the worse.
    • I should have walked away from the casino when my luck went south, but I stayed and ended up in the hole.
  2. (intransitive) To make an escape; to disappear.
    • He won! A disbeliever, from childhood, in the frequency of miracles, he gathered up seven hundred and forty dollars and "went south" with it.1929, Peter B. Kyne, The Parson of Panamint and Other Stories, page 197
  3. (slang) To give somebody oral sex.
  4. (slang) To rathole: to take chips off the table in a cash game without exiting the game completely, especially with the intention of limiting losses.

Questions about goes south

What is goes south the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Goes south is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go south.

Words near goes south in the dictionary

  1. goes slap off on
  2. goes snake
  3. goes so far as
  4. goes soft
  5. goes sour
  6. goes south
  7. goes straight
  8. goes strong
  9. goes supernova
  10. goes the distance
  11. goes the entire animal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goes south (page history and authors); go south (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.

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