Word.ws English Dictionary

gone to seed

gone to seed is the past participle of go to seed.

Meaning of go to seed

Verb

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

  1. To pass from flowering or ripening to the formation of seeds.
    • Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces.1911, Jack London, Adventure
  2. (broadly, figuratively) To deteriorate; to decline into an unkempt or debased condition.
    • But the "frump" will let herself and all her surroundings go to seed, not from humbleness of mind or an overwhelming sense of her own unworthiness, but in pure complacent conceit.1898, Eliot Gregory, Worldly Ways and Byways

Questions about gone to seed

What is gone to seed the past participle of?
Gone to seed is the past participle of go to seed.

Words near gone to seed in the dictionary

  1. gone to pot
  2. gone to press
  3. gone to Prestwich
  4. gone to ratshit
  5. gone to sea
  6. gone to seed
  7. gone to shit
  8. gone to show
  9. gone to sleep
  10. gone to smash
  11. gone to someone's head

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gone to seed (page history and authors); go to seed (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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