Going West

[fredpuli47]

"With his rival getting a lead of four, his chances of winning the jockey's championship have gone west" said a commentator.
Why do we say 'gone west' in such a context? What's the significance of west ?

[NazNomad]

I think it originated in WWI (cold be way off here)

The battle front ran roughly north-south and when a soldier was wounded or killed he was sent west on his way home.

[Nibble]

Wiki says:
Contemporary euphemisms and dysphemisms for death tend to be quite colorful, and someone who has died is said to have died, passed on, checked out, bit the big one, kicked the bucket, bitten the dust, popped their clogs, pegged it, carked it, snuffed it, turned their toes up, bought the farm, cashed in their chips, fallen off their perch, croaked, given up the ghost (originally a more respectful term, cf. the death of Jesus as translated in the King James Version of the Bible Mark 15:37), gone south, gone west, gone to California, shuffled off this mortal coil (from William Shakespeare's Hamlet)

[MarkRae]

http://tinyurl.com/2wq3lwy

[Nibble]

Or try here:


http://forum.wordrefe...owthread.php?t=389214

[scotman]

Cassell's slang dict gives it as being late 16th Cent. meaning to die. source is from the drive west along Holborn from Newgate prison to the gallows at Tyburn.

[fredpuli47]

Mark has it methinks. It is from the Sun setting..

Occident, the west, is from the Latin for 'to go down', 'to set (of the sun etc) not, as the link says, from the Latin for 'to kill'. The Latin 'occiduus' means 'western' .The two Latin words are of similar spelling and have the same root word (meaning 'to fall') but are different in meaning. The Romans didn't intend to convey the idea of the sun being killed, even figuratively!



His link is only wrong about 'occident' being from the Latin for 'to kill'. It's from the Latin for 'to go down', 'to set' (of the Sun and other celestial bodies). The two Latin words are spelt the same and have the same root word, a word meaning 'to fall'. The 'to kill' word's meaning was originally 'to strike down', hence 'to kill'

[juandelacruz]

As the sun sets in the West, all over the world, it was natural for earlier people to suppose that's where we go. Many people saw the sun as dying and being re-born in the morning. For Tolkien fans, Frodo goes to the West, rather mysteriously - even if you think Tolkien is over-rated blarney, he knew a huge amount about old myths and his books contain innumerable references to them.