Talk:far gone

RFV discussion: October–November 2020
Sense: “Intoxicated.” Tagged by DCDuring on 10 October, not listed. J3133 (talk) 16:49, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Related discussion on the Tea room. J3133 (talk) 16:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)


 * In my experience, seen as pretty far gone so search for expressions like "you were pretty far gone last night." Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:05, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We just need citations. I suspect that many of the uses are not included in our definitions. One could be far gone by reason of dementia, Alzheimer's, addiction, infatuation, mortal disease. A given faculty could be far gone. A business could be far gone in the sense of not ever likely to return to being in financial health. A car or other piece of machinery could be far gone because of rust. DCDuring (talk) 18:26, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * A better definition might be something like "in an advanced state of decline, from some natural process, such as disease, decay, or intoxication or from moral weakness." The core idea is that there is a decay process which, once progressed too far, becomes irreversible. The moral-weakness element is mostly historical or religious. DCDuring (talk) 19:38, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * See Citations:far gone. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Our entry for the adjective has a sense “intoxicated to the point of being unaware of one's surroundings”. So we have a SOP on our hands here. I think that this sense of gone is a specialization of a generic sense of having become useless, like you might say of a car, “that car is gone” when it has been totalled. Someone who has become severely incapacitated from intoxication has become useless for having a good time out together. Perhaps all uses of (pretty) far gone are essentially SOP.  --Lambiam 17:34, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The widespread inclusion of the term in other dictionaries should give us pause about the conclusion that it is simply SoP. Using gone alone where far gone is found rarely conveys the same meaning. If I say "The furniture is gone", the implication is that it has been removed from a given location. If I say "The furniture is far gone.", the implication is that it has deteriorated beyond the point of being worth repair, but definitely not that has been removed to a distant locati1on. It is almost as if far is a prefix. DCDuring (talk) 20:08, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I have managed to find cites for many different meanings of "far gone" (including "intoxicated"). There were already a couple of meanings represented on the citations page, and I have added to those, grouping the cites in a way that made sense to me. However, the boundaries between groups is so subjective that on the main page I took 's suggestion, and changed the definition to "in an advanced state...etc". I am calling this RFV-resolved. Kiwima (talk) 01:12, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm flattered. DCDuring (talk) 02:38, 3 November 2020 (UTC)