Word.ws English Dictionary

went to pot

went to pot is the simple past 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 went to pot

What is went to pot the simple past of?
Went to pot is the simple past of go to pot.

Words near went to pot in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went 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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