Word.ws English Dictionary

going to pot

going to pot is the present participle and gerund of go to pot.

Meaning of go to pot

Verb

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

  1. (figuratively) To come to ruin, especially to decline or deteriorate.
    • They haven't been maintaining it, and the downtown area has really gone to pot over the past 20 years.
    Synonyms:
    go to shit
  2. (archaic, dismissal) Go to hell; an angry dismissal.
    • At this moment the rabbit sprang from his arms and disappeared among the brush wood. "Go to pot," said the man, "you are a good-for-nothing dry-meated beast, to make the best of you."1837 September 20, William Cullen Bryant, Calhoun’s Diminished Stature

Questions about going to pot

What is going to pot the present participle and gerund of?
Going to pot is the present participle and gerund of go to pot.

Words near going to pot in the dictionary

  1. going to hell and back
  2. going to pains
  3. going to pieces
  4. going to pigs and whistles
  5. going to plan
  6. going to pot
  7. going to press
  8. going to Prestwich
  9. going to ratshit
  10. going to sea
  11. going to seed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going to pot (page history and authors); go to pot (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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