Today, we are going to learn an expression that you can use to talk about the situations that don’t go well. They don’t go as planned, and in fact, they end up very bad.
something goes south
越来越糟
When something goes south, it means kind of like it goes horribly wrong, or it goes completely the opposite of the way what you expected or wanted to happen. If we look at a map, or a compass, south is usually on the bottom. So, here, when we are saying something goes south, it’s not actually that it’s moving to the south direction, we are just using it as a replacement of going down.
So, when something goes south, it declines or goes worse. The situations where you might use this expression ‘to go south’ could be when talking about a relationship that goes sour or goes bad. You can say ‘it’s getting sour’ or ‘it’s getting south’.
English speakers also use this expression often to talk about investment. If your investment is going south, it means that you are losing money, or the value of the investment is going down. All right let’s look at some examples.
EXAMPLE I
A: There you are. What took you so long to get here? I’ve been waiting for over an hour.
B: Sign…it’s a long story.
A: Well, let’s hear it.
B: I woke up late and jumped in my car to come to meet you.
A: Ok, and?
B: And this is where things started to go south for me, because I forgot my wallet while I was rushing out the door.
A: You just forgot your wallet. You could just let me know. I’d have spotted you some cash for today.
B: I know. But when I was driving home to grab it, I got pulled over for speeding.
A: What? Oh, no.
B: Yeah, and of course, I didn’t have my licence on me because it was in my wallet. So they gave me two tickets. One for driving without a licence, and one for speeding.
A: Oh my god. What a nightmare.
B: Worst day ever.
In this example, we see two friends are arguing a little bit because one of the friends was late for one hour for a meeting. But she had a good excuse because her day really went south. She started off by waking up late, and as she was rushing out the door to meet her friend, she forgot her wallet. And because of that, she was speeding when got back to get it, and she got pulled over by the police. So a bad day got worse, and the day really went south. She just had one piece of bad luck after another.
There is another expression in this example, which is ‘to spot you some cash’, meaning to lend you some cash. Since the girl in this example forgot her wallet, then her friend will pay for lunch and she could pay him back later.
Let’s look at another example.
EXAMPLE II
A: Wow, what a wild day at the stock market.
B: Right. The day started well but started going south around 10 am.
A: It looks like my whole portfolio is down around 5%.
B: Mine too. Actually I think a lot of people are in the same boat. We’ll have to cross our fingersthat things bounce back tomorrow.
In this example, it’s talking about the stock market. The stock market is doing really well at the beginning of the day, but at 10 am, it started to go south. The stock market started to decline, and they were losing money. They said that their portfolio was down around 5%. The portfolio is the stocks that they are in charge of.
Two other expression in the example are ‘we are in the same boat’ and ‘cross fingers’.
‘We are in the same boat’ just means everyone is in the same situation.
‘Cross fingers’ is a kind of superstition that people in western countries do for good luck. 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
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