go to seed

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

go to seed (third-person singular simple present goes to seed, present participle going to seed, simple past went to seed, past participle gone to seed)

1. (of a plant) To pass from flowering or ripening to the formation of seeds.
   • 1911, Jack London, Adventure:

     Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces.

2. (figuratively, by extension) To deteriorate; to decline into an unkempt or debased condition.
   • 1898, Eliot Gregory, Worldly Ways and Byways:

     But the "frump" will let herself and all her surroundings go to seed, not from humbleness of mind or an overwhelming sense of her own unworthiness, but in pure complacent conceit.

   • 1919, Jerome K. Jerome, All Roads Lead to Calvary:

     But suppose I hang about till eighty and die a childish old gentleman with a mind all gone to seed.

   • 2021 August 19, 27:45 from the start, in NewsHour (television production), Peter Meijer (actor), Public Broadcasting System:

     […] if this total Taliban takeover and collapse was one of the contingencies that […] President [Joe] Biden had foreseen, then how come this plan […] went to seed so rapidly?

   • 2023 May 28, Janan Ganesh, “Right on the money”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 2:

     I found that slick and graceful enough at 25. Now, with marriages going to seed all around me, it is the insight, the penetration, that makes me smile/wince.

Translations

plant: to pass to the formation of seeds

• Finnish: lakastua (fi)
• Irish: dul chun síl
• Maori: puarere (always used in the passive)

to deteriorate

• Finnish: rappeutua (fi)