Word.ws English Dictionary

went down the drain

went down the drain is the simple past 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 went down the drain

What is went down the drain the simple past of?
Went down the drain is the simple past of go down the drain.

Words near went down the drain in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went 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: “went down the drain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/went_down_the_drain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.