gone with the wind

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

Lost or destroyed, often suddenly or irretrievably

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

mất mát hoặc bị hủy hoại, thường đột ngột hoặc không thể lấy lại

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: carried away by the wind
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

And, gone with the wind … disabled sailors on the crest of a wave.
‘ Cynics say — cynics have already said — when your preaching is done, when your lofty words have gone with the wind, when the media has departed to tell another tale, the world will forget.

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 “gone with the wind” mean?

Lost or destroyed, often suddenly or irretrievably Literally: carried away by the wind

Is “gone with the wind” formal or informal?

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