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go south
Idioms and Phrases
Deteriorate or decline, as in The stock market is headed south again . This expression is generally thought to allude to compasses and two-dimensional maps where north is up and south is down. However, among some Native Americans, the term was a euphemism for dying, and possibly this sense led to the present usage. [ Slang ; first half of 1900s] Also see go west .Example Sentences
If events continue to go south in a big way, the IRGC might be forced to choose between competing, compelling security priorities.
Unfortunately, when things go south, they go south very quickly.
The equivalent of that nerve— the most direct route to its end organ—is to go south of the equivalent of the artery.
After all, they're not the ones who stand to lose when things inevitably go south.
And when bets started to go south, the market, realizing that it had no way to assess the extent of the damage, freaked out.
Write him a note, telling him you are obliged to go south to take a look at your mother's ranch.
Why does she go South for the same salary she has had in New Hampshire?'
It would be better than that to go south and make for Thibet, although even that would be a desperate expedition.
It was not very long after this that a party of young men set out to war, all mounted, to go south to look for the Utes.
Soon he must go South for his rice feast, for early in summer the birds of his clan descend upon the rice fields and lo!
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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