Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) to go on to the end, to do completely and exhaustively.

1833		D. Crockett Sketches and Eccentricities 40: But didn’t I go the whole animal?
1840		H. Cockton Valentine Vox 353: Then of course you mean to go the whole quadruped?
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 5 Sept. 2/5: Hayes would not go the ‘whole’ unclean animal.
1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms 159: to go the whole hog. A Western vulgarism, meaning to be out and out in favor of anything. A softened form of the phrase is to go the entire animal.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 June 2/7: [She] mounted the rostrum [...] with the resolve to go the animal, the whole animal and nothing but the animal so help her.
1856		Mons. Merlin 18 Oct. 6/1: Detailing his previous night’s adventures, one says he ‘went the entire animal.’ He didn’t; he went to Evans’s.
1858		Westmorland Gaz. 11 Sept. 8/5: [from N.Y. Teleg.] There ain’t no crocodiles about it. The old ’coon has been going the entire possum.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 62: Better pay first-class and go the entire animal.
1866		P. Lindsley Works 647: I am staunch for Jackson, and go the whole quadruped.
1866		Inquirer (Perth, WA) 21 Feb. 2/4: Referring to cattle and the Revenue, he ‘goes the whole animal’ — to use ‘elegant slang’.
1868		Sportsman 4 Feb. 2/1: Notes on News [...] Occasion ally going the whole animal ” is vulgarism that mav be followed with advantage.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 606: To go the whole animal is a frequent substitute [i.e. for go the whole hog] in the West, while in the West Indies the phrase is changed into going the whole dog.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 14/3: [W]hereupon a religious organ (which apparently goes the entire animal on the truth of the yarn) takes its humorous contemporary to task for ridiculing holy things [...].
1891		Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 904: He advised the noble Lord to withdraw his Motion, and let the Government go the whole animal.
1908		Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 383: He does not go the whole animal, but he has what he admits to be a bit — he says it is a very little bit — of Protection of his own.

(US) to go on to the end, to do completely and exhaustively.

1893		W.S. Walsh Literary Curiosities 190: Coon, Go the whole, an American equivalent for ‘go the whole hog’.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 95: Because of coon’s disparaging use, most people today steer clear of the many phrases in which the word has appeared, e.g. [...] to go the whole coon.

(US) to do thoroughly, to go all the way, to commit oneself unreservedly.

1834

W.A. Caruthers Kentuckian in N.Y. I 188: I’m flambergasted! if that ain’t what I call goin the whole cretur, he’d go to Congress from old Kentuck as easy as I could put a gin sling under my jacket.

(US) to risk or do everything possible.

1836		T. Haliburton Clockmaker I 23: I never seed or heerd tell of any harm in ’em, exept goin the whole figur for Gineral Jackson.
1840		T. Haliburton Letter-bag of the Great Western (1873) 71: It is not a subject for equalization, for studying balances, and for making nicely adjusted scales. We must go the whole figure, as they express it.
1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Mar. 6/1: ‘"1 go the whole flgure when I go for a man’.
1914		H. James Ivory Tower 309: He has the so to call it momentous season, or scene, [...] in which she goes the whole ‘figure’.

see under whole hog n.

see go all the way under all the way adv.