anything goes
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Beginning with the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, she argues, the floodgates to total permissiveness were opened and a society in which ‘ the permissive intellectual's anything goes’ was created.
In our earlier discussion of truth (see Chapter 4), we saw that it is not available in any absolute sense; but this does not mean that ‘ anything goes’.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “anything goes” mean?
There are no rules or standards to follow. Literally: all things are allowed
Is “anything goes” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.