Word.ws English Dictionary

gone to the wall

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

Meaning of go to the wall

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To make an all-out effort.
    • He'll be the one who goes to the wall when it's needed.
  2. (idiomatic) To fail, to run out of options. (especially of a business)
    • While he was doing his stories, and « getting on » in the world, Tevershall was going to the wall.1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 125
  3. (idiomatic) To be put aside or forgotten.
  4. (idiomatic) To take an extreme and determined position or measure.

Questions about gone to the wall

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

Words near gone to the wall in the dictionary

  1. gone to the polls
  2. gone to the restroom
  3. gone to the scaffold
  4. gone to the toilet
  5. gone to the trouble
  6. gone to the wall
  7. gone to the washroom
  8. gone to the well
  9. gone to town
  10. gone to town on
  11. gone to war

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gone to the wall (page history and authors); go to the wall (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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Cite this entry: “gone to the wall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gone_to_the_wall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.