Home › Glossary › Letter G

Go to pot

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To deteriorate, decline, or become ruined; to fall into a state of decay or disrepair through neglect or misfortune.

Detailed Definition
This idiom, possibly derived from the image of scraps going into a cooking pot—transformed from something whole into an undifferentiated mess—captures decline and loss of integrity. In poetry, it appears in elegies for lost places, people, or institutions, and in satirical verse lamenting cultural or political degradation. Poets invoke it to describe the slow deterioration that neglect produces, the way that without attention and care, things beautiful and good collapse into disorder. Its domesticity—the pot, the kitchen—grounds grand themes of decline in the everyday, suggesting that ruin is not always dramatic but often the quiet accumulation of small inattentions over time.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about a neglected garden might use go to pot to describe the particular quality of decline that inattention produces — the beautiful thing that, without tending, reverts to disorder; In a satirical poem about institutional decay, to go to pot is to describe the accumulated consequence of small inattentions — each one minor, each one contributing to a decline that, in retrospect, seems inevitable and was entirely preventable; A poem about aging might use go to pot with the wry self-awareness of someone who observes their own decline with more humor than despair — the body going to pot while the mind watches with affectionate detachment; In a poem about a relationship allowed to go to pot — the once-tended connection allowed to grow wild and finally weed-choked — the domestic imagery carries genuine elegy; A political poem might describe a democracy going to pot — its institutions softening, its norms eroding, each small concession contributing to the gradual transformation of something cultivated into something merely chaotic; The cooking origin of the phrase — scraps going into the pot, the once-whole reduced to an undifferentiated mass — allows a poet to extend the metaphor into territory that the colloquial use does not fully exploit
Additional Notes
This idiom describes decline through neglect or disorder. In poetry, it can apply to gardens, houses, towns, reputations, bodies, or ideals. The phrase has a colloquial bluntness that can sharpen social criticism. It pairs well with rust, weeds, cracked plaster, spoiled food, broken fences, and the sorrow of things not cared for.
Also Known As
Go downhill Fall apart
Skip to main content