English · Idiom Candidate

go to seed

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To become run down or neglected

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Trở nên xuống cấp hoặc bị bỏ bê

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: producing seeds, as a plant

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Someone's really let this lot go to seed.

Looks somewhat gone to seed.

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.

Topics: Trees & plants

Common questions

What does “go to seed” mean?

To become run down or neglected Literally: producing seeds, as a plant

Is “go to seed” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.