go south

Idioms

Deteriorate or decline, as in The stock market is headed south again. This expression is generally thought to allude to compasses and two-dimensional maps where north is up and south is down. However, among some Native Americans, the term was a euphemism for dying, and possibly this sense led to the present usage. [Slang; first half of 1900s] Also see go west.

Example Sentences

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go south

As he sees it, AI is good at detecting patterns in data, but the patterns that hold firm in a long bull market may not be valid when stocks suddenly go south.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

Despite those efforts, Israeli officials assess that hundreds of elite Hezbollah fighters were able to go south of the Litani River and join up with other Hezbollah units there after the war with Iran began.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026

So how many of these borderline investments would have to go south before the fund’s net asset value gets whacked?

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 7, 2025

The final-round trip west has seen English touring hopes go south before.

From BBC ● Mar. 14, 2025

The best thing to do, it being fall, was to head south or west for the winter, and because I didn’t want to go south I decided to go west.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

go south

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