Word.ws English Dictionary

going down the drain

going down the drain is the present participle and gerund of go down the drain.

Meaning of go down the drain

Verb

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

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) Synonym of go down the toilet: to fail.

Questions about going down the drain

What is going down the drain the present participle and gerund of?
Going down the drain is the present participle and gerund of go down the drain.

Words near going down the drain in the dictionary

  1. going down like a sack of potatoes
  2. going down on
  3. going down south
  4. going down swinging
  5. going down that road
  6. going down the drain
  7. going down the khazi
  8. going down the pan
  9. going down the road
  10. going down the toilet
  11. going down the tube

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going down the drain (page history and authors); go down the drain (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:

Cite this entry: “going down the drain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_down_the_drain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.