gone adj.1
1. (US) describing someone or something considered to be a lost cause, a hopeless case.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Proverbs II Ch. vii: And in madde jelousy she is so farre gon / She thinkth I roon over all, that I looke on. | |
| Hamlet II ii: Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone. | |
| Greenes Tu Quoque Scene ix: I was so farre gone, that desperation knocked at my elbow. | |
| Morn. Chron. (London) 6 June 1/5: [US source] We’d just gave ’em up for clean gone, when the bow-oar’s-man said he’d seen some’at splashing. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Spirit of the Times (NY) 14 Apr. 2/3: Niblo must now get up something new, or he’s a ‘gone sucker’. | |
| Boston Satirist (MA) 24 Feb. n.p.: You are a gone case Richard. | |
| Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill 41: We used water, Cologne, &c., while Doctor Lobelia was sent for, but all our efforts and his were ineffectual. [...] We were giving her up as a gone case, the only case he had ever lost. | |
| Lost Will 4: That feller is dead gone; the police hadn’t oughter let him run loose. | |
 | Ashtabula Teleg. (OH) 24 Nov. 1/6: I’m a gone case, thinks I —wiped out sure. | |
| Vancouver Indep. (WA) 8 July 3/3: The teamster grew nervous, fearing that it was a ‘gone game’ with himl. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Jan. 12/1: ‘They might have been “gone,”’ wailed Kirby, ‘but they were very well behaved. Didn’t even ask for a euchre deck.’. | |
| ‘The Spellin’-Bee’ Lyrics of Lowly Life 99: But Lawyer Jones of all gone men did shorely look the gonest, / When he found out that he’d furgot to put the ‘h’ in ‘honest’. | |
| Abner Daniel 309: Ef you don’t back me in it, I’m a gone dog. | |
| One More Chance 145: It’s no use [...] I’m too far gone. | |
| Professor How Could You! 66: You are a wreck, a down-and-outer, and pretty far gone. | |
| My Uncle Silas 172: It seemed that sometimes, too, he would drink his medicine in one swig, by the bottleful. He was so far gone as that. | |
| Duke 36: That boy’s all gone. | |
| They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 191: Gone in the scone. | |
| Addict in the Street (1966) 235: Tommy wants to be cured, but Tommy is so far gone. | |
| Campus Sl. Fall 3: gone – forget it; stop it; a negative expression, wrong. | |
| Close Pursuit (1988) 192: No way to tie the gun to the dead man? Adios, sonny. You’re gone. | |
| (con. 1986) Sweet Forever 79: You ask Tutt, she was way past gone. | |
| Dreamcatcher 70: I’m not that far gone. |
2. of a person or animal, dead or doomed; usu. in combs., see below.
| Winter’s Tale IV iii: He must know ’tis none of your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. | |
| Woman’s Wit III iv: What a Devil, is he quite gone! | |
| Beggar Girl (1813) I 14: Poor little animal, I thought it had been quite gone. | |
| Mr Mathews’ Comic Annual 8: I’m too far gone for them to injure me now. | |
| Little Ragamuffin 37: Mrs Jenkins had said she was ‘gone.’. | |
| Bushrangers 427: Dick is gone. He stuck out to the last, and died like a bushranger. | |
| Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 388: There’s a gone nigger, for a certainty! | |
| Bird o’ Freedom 22 Jan. 2: Each death-drawn trace on the bruiser’s face / Jack, sighing, looked upon, / Then, weeping, said: ‘Oh, I’m afraid / The poor old fellow’s gone!’. | |
| Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 88: I’m gone, Oscar [...] He got me then. | |
| ‘Nightmare Town’ Nightmare Town (2001) 39: I’m gone, Steve. That Rymer — fooled us all. | |
| Seeds of Man (1995) 269: I ain’t no gone galoot. | |
| Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) 163: If some hypo finds out that another hypo is a stool pigeon they give him [...] a hot shot. If you take it you’re gone. | |
| On the Yard (2002) 27: It was the fuzz’s action from the door. They wanted me gone. | |
| Anderson Tapes 248: PAGENT: No pulse. NATHAN: Brisling? BRISLING: No heartbeat. [Lapse of nine seconds.] NATHAN: He’s gone. | |
| Yardie 100: One sound and you gone. | |
| Observer 10 Mar. 13: I’m not in no gansta warfare with no one but you can still be gone. I pray to God that, if you are gonna take me, don’t let me dead in Hackney. | |
| (con. 1943) Coorparoo Blues [ebook] ‘You’re gone, pal. I’ll get you for this’. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Hitmen 243: ‘He doesn’t even understand why our people want him gone’. |
3. (also gonesville) drunk, intoxicated by a drug; also in fig. use; thus half-gone adj.
| Wits I i: Luce, thou art drunk; far gone in almond-milk. | |
| Poems 12: And so at sixes and sevens they both drank on, That e’re they went away, they were quite gone. | |
| Life of Jonathan Wild (1784) IV 279: I followed him with bumpers, as fast as possible [...] At length perceiving him very far gone, I watched an opportunity, and ran out. | |
| Monthly Mag. I 494: Quite gone, a little gone. | |
| Cockney Adventures 13 Jan. 85: Miss Nancy was too far gone to give any explanation. | |
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 25/2: [We] found Joe and Tommy three-parts gone and in the best of humor with each other. | |
| Harvard Crimson 23 Jan. 🌐 She asks me how I’d say that I was – well, I was ‘mashed’ unless I used slang. Why, I’d a good deal rather say ‘I’m perfectly gone;’ that isn’t slang, and it means just the same. | |
| Journal of Solomon Sidesplitter 184: I’ve often seen her ‘half’ gone. | |
| Marvel 29 Dec. 676: I never see a chap so far gone. | |
| Sun (NY) 8 Dec. 37/2: Single-O’s so far gone with the whiskey he don’t know when it’s over. | |
| ‘“Drunk” Again’ in AS IV:6 440: about gone, all gone, or gone. | |
| Strange Brother (1932) 23: ‘He’s entirely gone.’ ‘Yes, blotto!’. | |
| [song title] Gone with the Gin. | |
| City of Spades (1964) 62: I saw Mr Pew was high — real gone. | |
| One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 151: She shootup, she look plain gone. | |
| Vulture (1996) 8: He was really gone now [...] a man who’s really enjoying his own rap. | |
| Blow Your House Down 4: He wasn’t that far gone: he was at the nasty-nice stage when most of the rows took place. | |
| Crack War (1991) 57: Richie is smashed. I mean gone. | |
| Tampa Trib. (FL) 7 Mar. 1F/2: Drunk — gone, faced, jerked. | |
| Guardian G2 11 Nov. 6: A few years of being rat-arsed, smashed, loaded, leathered, pissed, destroyed, slashed, gone. | |
| (con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 628: Panic. Suicide. Your stock ‘lone assassin’ — gone on crystal meth. | |
| Birthday 135: You was too far gone to notice. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Bobby March Will Live Forever 823: [L]ying on the bed, gone to the world. | |
| Widespread Panic 163: [of an injection] 100, 99, 98, gonesville. |
4. insane, crazy, bizarre.
| [ | | Honest Whore Pt 1 IV i: wife: He talkes to himselfe, oh hees much gone indeed. [...] cand.: What? am I mad say you, and I not know it? off.: That proues you mad, because you know it not]. |
| Brave Irishman I iii: dr. clyst: What does he mean? dr. gally: What should a mad man mean? He’s very far gone. | |
| Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 52: The boss is clean gone, – stark mad. | |
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 315: ‘I’m not such a fool as you take me for,’ said Gill (although he was a ‘wee-bit’ gone in the upper-story). | |
| Sundrland Dly Echo 18 July 3/1: Clean Gone. At the Borough police Court to-day, a woman was charged with being insane. | |
| ‘Mitchell: a Character Sketch’ in Roderick (1972) 134: They agreed that the traveller was a bit gone. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper XL:2 75: He’s gone [...] He’s clean gone, poor fellow. | |
| Gippsland Times (Vic.) 2 Nov. 5/2: A tabbie wot wud pull yew on / Wud wanter be well potty, / Or else she’d be wot they call gone, / A shingle short, or dotty. | |
| Islanders (1933) 132: Mush, ploid on ye, Manus, but yer clean gone! He’s fair light in the head smokin’ tay’. | |
| From Here to Eternity (1998) 635: If you once start to yell you’re gone. Dont start to yell. You’ll still be yellin when they come to take you out. | |
| Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 20: [S]he gave out with a very complicated spiel [...] This really sounded gone to me, but I nodded as if I understood. | |
| Gone Fishin’ 166: I reckon he’s a bit gone in the scone. | |
| Sl. U. 95: gone [...] 2. crazy, spaced out. | |
| Rent Boy 51: Sandy’s like really gone, [...] it’s like she’s talking right through you at her own face in a mirror. | |
| Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 320: [H]er shucky-wucky stomp song entitled ‘He’s My Blond Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy’. |
5. worn out, exhausted; old.
| Trial of Elizabeth Canning in Howell State Trials (1816) 491: What condition did she seem to be in with regard to her health?—She seemed to be almost spent, just gone. | |
| ‘Two Sundowners’ in Roderick (1972) 100: Thy were out of tobacco, and their trousers were so helplessly ‘gone’ behind. | |
| Such is Life 142: I say, Tom; I ain’t a man to jack-up while I got a sanguinary leg to stan’ on; but I’m gone in the inside. | |
| Lonely Plough (1931) 194: You look so – [...] so dreadfully ‘gone before!’. | |
| ‘Sun Cured’ in Coll. Short Stories (1941) 438: I was so gone by this that I couldn’t talk. | |
| Mirage (1958) 230: ‘You’re far gone,’ Martha said [...] ‘I is. We’s walked a long way.’ The dragging, weary footsteps were in Nona’s voice. | |
| Bunch of Ratbags 203: They were both well into their fifties, but they sure had some real gone visitors. At least a couple of times a week, they each had some old geezer visiting them for some love. | |
| Fields of Fire (1980) 380: He was prob’ly too weak to change magazines. Or too gone to think about it. | |
| London Fields 264: So clearly were the lifts defunct – slaughtered, gone, dead these twenty years. |
6. (orig. US black) a general positive intensifier, excellent, extraordinary, weird and wonderful, lost in music, drugs etc.; esp. gone cat, gone chick.
| ‘Bryant Park’ in Huncke Reader (1998) 308: We just lit up, man. Real gone stuff. | |
| [song title] He a Real Gone Guy. | |
| Waiters 175: ‘Babes,’ he said at last, ‘this is reeal gawnn!’. | |
| Junkie (1966) 27: Let’s [...] go over to Denny’s. They have some gone numbers on the box. | |
| Viper 30: I was [...] ‘gone’ on he hot music [...] The clienetele was crazy, really gone. | |
| Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) 382: Man, he’s the gonest! | |
| Hiparama of the Classics 18: Nero was one of the wildest, Gonest, Freakiest Studs. | |
| City of Night 97: If you ain got a pad, you can always make it at Destinee’s — it’s like a gone mission, man! | |
| Queens’ Vernacular 98: gone (fr black sl, ’20s–’30s, revived for a laugh) [...] 2. handsome, striking. | |
| What If You Died Tomorrow (1977) II i: I just have to look in some woman’s eyes and I’m gone. | |
| Street Gangs 224: Real gone Perfect. | |
| Glitz 122: These guys, they get on their roll, I don’t even know what they’re playing. They’re spazzed out on ganja anyway, they don’t give a shit, they’re gone. | |
| Indep. Rev. 20 Feb. 3: This makes no sense at all unless you know that ‘gone’ meant ‘really good’. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 145: Gone sides from Diz, Bird, Miles. |
7. (US campus) asleep.
| Campus Sl. Nov. |
8. (US) ejected, sent away.
| Vice Cop 197: ‘If I even suspected him of double-dealing me, however innocently, his ass was gone, possibly all the way to Attica’. | |
| Riker’s 46: ‘Well, he should have been gone [(authors’ note) kicked out]’. |
9. see gone on
In derivatives
(US) a state of inarticulacy.
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Mar. 6/1: They could elicit nothing but a sigh and an idiotic smile. The bride attributed his utter goneness to love for her. |
see separate entry.
In compounds
see under chicken n.
(orig. US) one who is utterly doomed, without hope of escape.
| Amer. Turf Register & Sporting Mag. Oct. 82: The coon cried in the anguish of despair, that he was a gone coon; rolled up the white of his eyes, folded his paws on his breast, and tumbled out of the tree at the mercy of the dog,. | |
| Westward Ho! I 80: If the horn gets broadside to the current, I wouldn’t risk a huckleberry to a persimmon that we don’t every soul get treed, and sink to the bottom like gone suckers. | |
| Diary in America. II 232: In the Western States [...] ‘I’m a gone “coon” implies ‘I am distressed—or ruined—or lost’ . | |
| N.Y. Daily Express 24 Feb. 1/3–4: [He’s convinced he’s drunk poison.] ‘What shall I do,[’] beseeched John who thought himself a ‘gone sucker’. | |
| High Life in N.Y. II 136: Gracious knows, I’m afeard we’re gone suckers. | |
| Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 88: Oh, Jerry! Jerry! you’re a gone sucker. | |
| Dict. Americanisms 160: gone goose. ‘It’s a gone goose with him,’ means that he is past recovery. [...] In New York it is said ‘He’s a gone gander,’ i. e. a lost man; and in the West ‘He’s a gone coon.’. | |
| Lewis Arundel 85: Now, if that picture of ugliness turns out an eastern traveller we’re gone ’coons. | |
| Delhi Sketch Bk 1 July 79/2: [I]f he submits to the position wherein he has placed himself, helplessly degenerates from bad to worse [...] he is a gone coon. | |
| It Is Never Too Late to Mend 1 321: I told my wife I was a gone coon. | |
| Artemus Ward, His Book 159: The Browns giv theirselves up for gone coons, when the hired gal diskivers a trap door to the cabin & thay go down threw it & cum up threw the bulkhed. | |
| Letters by an Odd Boy 2: When I saw him [...] break out into tails and stick-ups, I said he was a gone coon. | |
| Bushrangers 283: When they strikes yer with that tail, yer a gone sucker, unless ye has plenty of whiskey to pull at. | |
| Knocknagow 481: ‘I’m a gone coon,’ replied Mr. Lloyd. | |
| in Living London (1883) Nov. 508: I have been a ‘gone coon’ for ever so many years. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 2 Dec. 10/2: [S]uddenly drawing his revolver [he] said: ‘I’m a gone coon,’ and shot himself through the head. | |
| Sporting Times 19 Apr. 1/2: We are sorry for Jules Simon, for he is most veritable a gone coon. | |
| Hawaiian Gaz. (HI) 5 Apr. 5/1: The coffee-colored negro had his razor all ready [...] ‘If don’ cyarve him to de heart, I’m a gone coon, head me a-talkin’, niggers?’. | |
| Northerner 218: I knew he was a gone ’coon. | |
| Luckiest Girl in School 76: ‘If Bunty puts me to construe anywhere on page 21, I’m a gone coon’. | |
| ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 201: goner, gone coon, gone goose, one past recovery. | |
| Me – Gangster 137: He’s a gone coon, your old man. | |
| Bully Hayes 70: The steward was plumb bughouse; loony as a gone coon. | |
| Seraph on the Suwanee (1995) 762: If he don’t, and that mighty quick, he’s a gone ginny. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Pallet on the Floor 105: If you hadn’t grabbed me that day ten years ago I was a gone coon. | |
| 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 be gone coon. |
(orig. US) a person or thing that is beyond all hope.
| Jrnls Gen. Assembly State of Vermont 195: Burton once said to Stephen, you are a gone goose and had better state the facts than not. | |
| Gleaner 4: ‘You’re a gone goose, friend,’ said another, with an ominous shake of the head . | |
| Sam Slick in England II 29: You must be up and doin’, Sam, or it’s gone goose with you. | |
| Dict. Americanisms 160: gone goose. ‘It’s a gone goose with him,’ means that he is past recovery. The phrase is a vulgarism in New England. In New York it is said ‘He’s a gone gander,’ i. e. a lost man; and in the West ‘He’s a gone coon.’. | |
| Sam Slick’s Wise Saws II 192: You’ll have to dig him up first, for he is a gone goose. | |
| Brisbane Courier (Qld) 5 Feb. 4/5: ‘Gone-goose’ is ruined, whether by involuntary means, or by a long wilful course of profligacy. | |
| Americanisms 607: In the West, where the picturesque element always prevails over classic simplicity, goner is deemed too tame, and improved into gone goose, gone gander, or gone coon. | |
| ‘Central Connecticut Word-List’ in DN III:i 10: gone goose, n. same as gone coon. | |
| B.E.F. Times 22 Jan. (2006) 291/2: A few whiffs [i.e. of poison gas] and you are a gone gosling. | |
| ‘Un Morso doo Pang’ in One Basket (1947) 74: Believe me, Chuck, if you shoot the way you play ball, you’re a gone goon already. | |
| ‘Dialect Words and Phrases from West-Central West Virginia’ in AS II:8 355: He is a gone goose. | |
| ‘The Lily of St. Pierre’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 136: I catch pneumonia, and it looks as if maybe I am a gone gosling. | |
| Walk in Sun 90: Otherwise you’re a gone goose, a dead soldier. | |
| Sweet Thursday (1955) 132: Holy apples! He’s a gone goose. | |
| Bop Fables 64: This gone-gosling is Fort Knox with feathers for sure. | |
| Sharky’s Machine 216: Don’t make no difference if I’m in Yokohama [...] or the fuckin’ South Pole, I’m a gone gosling. | |
| s (1990) 737: If you puke it back up, you’re a gone fuckin goose. | |
| It (1987) 926: ‘Kid’s a gone goose,’ Henry muttered. | |
| Tips and Traps When Buying a Home 89: If that’s the way you feel when you open negotiations for the purchase of your next home, you are a gone goose. |
(US) an escapee.
| Other Body in Grant's Tomb 12: ‘And him a real gone guy?’ ‘Utterly. He’s technically a fugitive from justice’. |
(UK und.) one who is dead.
| Shadows of the Night in Illus. Police News 6 July 12/4: ‘He’s a gone ’un’ [...] ‘Yes, and his death has left my road open’. |
In phrases
(US) defeated, ‘finished.
| Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Sept. 8 n.p.: We thought he [i.e. Andrew Jackson] was ‘gone Dick’ — that they would beat him [...] as our candidate for governor. |
(US) exhausted.
| in Songs of the Gold Rush 160: I am ‘done gone in.’. | |
| Vandover and the Brute (1914) 227: You do look gone-in this morning, sure. [Ibid.] 243: Put me to bed, will you, Bandy? I feel all gone in. |
1. discovered.
| Soldier’s Story of His Captivity 123: Once, when a twig broke, he made a motion to look up, and I thought we were ‘gone up’; but he merely stirred his fire. |
2. dead.
| Memoirs I 86: In reply to Meek’s question, I stated that I had not seen Spencer’s family, when he remarked, ‘Well, I fear that they are gone up,’ a phrase used in that country in early days to mean that they had been killed [DA]. |
3. finished, defeated; thus all-gone-up-ness n., a feeling of exhaustion.
| Rebel Prisons 98: We heard nothing from Richmond, although one of the guards told one of our boys, at this time, that it was ‘a gone-up case’ [DA]. | |
| Chicago Trib. 3 Nov. 1/7: The Huck men were hopeful, but the Hesingites felt themselves toward night clean gone-up [DA]. | |
| Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 9: all-gone-up-ness. n. A feeling of total exhaustion. | |
| ‘The Great Bond Robbery’ in et al. Old Sleuth’s Freaky Female Detectives (1990) 75/1: If she has ‘sloped,’ we are gone up! |
4. unfashionable.
| Constitutionalist (Elyria, OH) 30 Mar. 4/1: ‘There sir,’ said Dowlas [...] ‘what do you think of that?’ ‘O, that’s played out,’ said the American. [...] ‘It’s played, I tell you. [...] I mean ter say it’s gone up.’. |
SE in slang uses, with link to senses above
In compounds
1. (also gone, well gone) of an individual, obsessed by, esp. when in love.
| ‘’Arry on the River’ in Punch 9 Aug. 57/1: As for that younger gurl, Carry, / I’ll eat my old boots if she isn’t dead gone on Yours bloomingly, ’Arry. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 11 Oct. 6/4: ‘I’m dead gone on the darling duck’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Feb. 3/3: Among his friends his time he spends / In true Australian ‘blow;’ / What lies he tells! How all the belles / ‘Are gone on me you know!’. | |
| Lantern (New Orleans, LA) 10 Nov. 2: George Juet [...] is dead gone on a coon. | |
| ‘Her Little Responsibility’ in Civil & Military Gaz. 19 Sept. (1909) 15: ‘Say, were you ever mashed on a girl? [...] dead, clean gone, head over ears’. | |
| Dead Bird (Sydney) 12 July 2/1: ‘Is that young man gone, Flossie?’ [...] ‘Oh, awfully’. | |
| ‘One-Eyed Dogs’ in Roderick (1972) 273: A girl I was gone on told me she was very sorry but she was sure she hadn’t given me any encouragement. | |
| [perf. Marie Lloyd] The Geisha 🎵 Every little Jappy chappie’s gone upon the Geisha. | |
| Illus. Police News 18 Feb. 2/2: A Girl ‘Clean Gone’ on a Soldier Tries to Commit Suicide. | |
| Artie (1963) 53: They was gone on each other. | |
| ‘Send Round the Hat’ in Roderick (1972) 478: There was one little girl in Bendigo that I was properly gone on. | |
| Toothsome Tales Told in Sl. 82: Adalee had a little gone feeling herself. | |
| ‘A Polyglot Policeman’ Sporting Times 1 Apr. 1/4: That rozzer isn’t in it, and he hasn’t scored a chalk, / He’s fair gone on her, but cannot give it lung; / For, through having everlastingly to jabber foreign talk, / He’s forgotten how to speak his native tongue! | |
| Sinister Street I 169: Dora, I’m frightfully gone on you. | |
| Spats’ Fact’ry (1922) 27: Lovely girl, Feathers, ’n’ ez good ez she’s beautiful. I’m fair gone. | |
| ‘Two Gallants’ Dubliners (1956) 50: I know the way to get around her, man. She’s a bit gone on me. | |
| Ulysses 694: I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for I knew he was gone on me. | |
| ‘Haircut’ in Coll. Short Stories (1941) 28: i ain’t no mind reader, but it was wrote all over her face that she as gone. | |
| Final Count 850: According to my father, she was clean gone on me when I was a child. | |
| Hungry Men 102: I’m too far gone on you. | |
| (con. 1880–90s) I Knock at the Door 120: He wished she hadn’t picked on him, for a lot in the ring knew he was gone on her. | |
| Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. | |
| Dead Ringer 85: Kid, you’re really gone on that blond? | |
| Way West 230: She was gone on you. She was now. Purty as paint and a gone beaver on you. | |
| I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 241/2: well gone – infatuated, used like our ‘real gone’. | |
| Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window in Three Negro Plays (1969) I ii: You’re that gone on her? | |
| (con. 1940s) Confessions 171: Myself and the French chef were not that gone on each other. | |
| Glass Canoe (1982) 88: I warn num, but he’s too far gone on those muscles of hers to listen to me. | |
| Limericks Down Under 30: A weirdo in old Kirribilli / Was gone on a (four-footed) filly. |
2. of an idea or inanimate object, impressed by.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 23 Oct. 13/2: Peter Campbell is obviously ‘gone’ on alliteration. [...] Next Sunday ‘The Pulverising Prophet, or the Peripatetic Preacher’ will be given. | |
| Northern Trib. (Cheboygan, MI) 5 Nov. 3/1: I met an old chap who was ‘dead gone’ on piety [...] and he came up with the ‘rhino’. | |
| Atlanta Constitution 25 Aug. 4/5: She was ‘not a bit mashed on laces, but dreadfully gone on fans.’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Oct. 24/1: Writer isn’t gone on Rollo’s prospects for he doesn’t own the physique and hasn’t got the fighting mug of Otto. | |
| Pall Mall Gaz. 28 Mar. 1/3: The dosser in finds is always ‘gone’ on rump steak. | |
| (con. 1890s) Pictures in the Hallway 185: Archie was now completely gone on the stage. | |
| Cartoon City 150: ‘I like the bit about half a million,’ he said. ‘I would not be so gone on the other thing.’. |
In phrases
see under buggery n.
1. (Aus.) wholly gone, completely vanished.
| Canberra Times 18 July 5/3: When Martini’s absence was discovered the other man, Gene Lovering, was asked where he was, and replied laconically, ‘He’s gone to Gowings’. | |
| Between the Devlin 9: ‘We’re goners, the lot of us. Gowings.’. |
2. (Aus.) used fig. and in context to imply some form of inadequacy: physical, mental, suffering from an excess of drink .
| Scone Advocate (NSW) 4 June 3: ' Call in on some executive, find the chair vacant, and ask, ‘is he out?’ and the invariable reply will be ‘Yes— gone to Gowing’s’. | |
| Aus. Lang. (2nd edn) 231: Some localized samples: Gone to Gowings (Gowing Bros. Ltd. is the name of a Sydney firm) [...] drunk. | |
| Cop It Sweet 40: gone to gowings: pec[uliar to] Sydney. Hopelessly beaten or outclassed. | |
| Lily on the Dustbin 118–9: If I say a person is too stupid to know ‘whether it is Thursday or Anthony Horderns’, or that, being astray as to wits she has ‘gone to Gowings’ my words only have meaning if my auditor understands that these are famous Sydney shops. Furthermore, ‘gone to Gowings’ may not have much impact on people too young to remember a long-continued advertising campaign of which ‘gone to Gowings’ was the slogan. | |
| ‘Dr Doug Meets His Match’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] Mulray was gone to Gowings [...] the Rev. Dr Doug was staggering. | |
| Phraseology and Culture in Eng. 242: Meanwhile in citations obtained from a Google search of Australian internet documents in 2004, gone to Gowings is commonly used to refer to dementia. |
(Aus.) in pawn.
| Aus. Lang. 26: The phrase gone to Moscow, which has nothing to do with the Soviet capital, but which simply means ‘pawned’. | |
| I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 233/2: gone to Moscow – pawned. |
dead.
| , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: He is gone to the diet of worms; he is dead and buried, or gone to Rot-his-bone. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. |
see gone on