go to the dogs

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Related to go to the dogs: put on the dog, You can't teach an old dog new tricks

go to the dogs

To deteriorate or go awry. Boy, this party has really gone to the dogs. First, there was the issue with the caterer, and now half the guests aren't coming.

See also: dog, go, to

go to the dogs

see under go to pot.

See also: dog, go, to

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

go to the dogs

If a country or organization goes to the dogs, it becomes less successful and of worse quality than it was in the past. In the 1960s the country was fast going to the dogs. Television, we warned, would go to the dogs under the Government's crazy franchising system.

See also: dog, go, to

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

go to the dogs

deteriorate shockingly, especially in behaviour or morals. informal

This idiom derives from the fact that attending greyhound races was once thought likely to expose a person to moral danger and the risk of incurring great financial loss.

1997 Daily Telegraph If you read the English media or watch the cretinosities of television, you would think that the country is going to the dogs.

See also: dog, go, to

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

go to the ˈdogs

(American English also go to hell in a ˈhandbasket) (informal) (often used of a company, an organization, a country, etc.) become less powerful, efficient, etc. than before: Many people think this country’s going to the dogs.

See also: dog, go, to

go to the dogs

To go to ruin; degenerate.

See also: dog, go, to

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

go(ing) to the dogs

To be ruined. This expression, which has meant to come to a bad end since the seventeenth century, assumes that dogs are inferior creatures, as so many other sayings do (a dog’s life, die like a dog, sick as a dog, and so on). It was already a cliché by the time Shaw wrote, “The country is going to the dogs” (Augustus Does His Bit, 1917).