English · Idiom Historical

gone to pot

Preserved but no longer current.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Ruined, gone to the bad. The allusion is to the pot into which bits of already cooked meat are cast prior to their making their last appearance as hash.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Bị hư hỏng, trở nên tồi tệ

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)

Sources & notes

Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.

Topics: Historical slang (1800s)

Common questions

What does “gone to pot” mean?

Ruined, gone to the bad. The allusion is to the pot into which bits of already cooked meat are cast prior to their making their last appearance as hash.

Is “gone to pot” formal or informal?

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

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