go begging
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To be unused or unwanted
Literally: to beg for something
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Mr Fallon and his fellow ministers have let thousands of jobs go begging because they have refused to let Darlington compete on level terms.
Government research cash goes begging
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “go begging” mean?
To be unused or unwanted Literally: to beg for something
Is “go begging” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.