Jim recently (ish) wrote to ask me about this line he read in Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz:
At the time, I hadn’t completed a deal with the BBC and the whole thing could have gone West.
Twenty-some years in the UK, and I hadn't knowingly encountered that meaning of go west. But it's definitely out there.
Cambridge Dictionary gives the sense that Horowitz probably intended, and marks it as "UK informal".
Meaning of go west in English
go west
If something goes west, it is lost, damaged, or spoiled in some way:
I couldn't get a ticket - that's my last chance to see the show gone west.
Dictionary.com defines go west as 'die', and indicates that someone out there is 'ascribing' this meaning Native American legend, though that can't be where English got it from (the dates don't match up). (I'm not sure I see the purpose of pointing out this incorrect information. Especially when no one asked you to, it's likely to just call more attention to the bad info, not to spread the good info. And "correction can strengthen belief in misinformation".)
go west
See synonyms for go west on Thesaurus.com
Die, as in He declared he wasn't ready to go west just yet. This expression has been ascribed to a Native American legend that a dying man goes to meet the setting sun. However, it was first recorded in a poem of the early 1300s: “Women and many a willful man, As wind and water have gone west.”
The Oxford English Dictionary has several meanings for go west, and has the 'die' meaning as 'originally Scottish'. The date in brackets after each definition is the year of the OED's first citation for that sense:
a. Of the sun: to move towards the western horizon; to set, go down. [c.1425]
b.
(a) Originally Scottish (figurative) To die. [1532]The sense became widespread during the First World War (1914–18). The relationship between quot. a1532 and the later evidence has not been firmly established. [Apparently ultimately with reference to the west as the place of the setting sun and perhaps also to its identification (esp. in Celtic traditions) as the abode of the dead. The uses at Phrases 1b(b) probably show a further development of this sense. There is probably no foundation to the suggestion that either sense results from folk-etymological alteration of go whist
(b) To be lost or destroyed; to disappear, vanish; to end in failure, come to grief. [1916]c. go west, young man: used as an encouragement to seek fortune in the American West; also in extended use. [1836 in the form go to the West, 1856 Young man, go west]Attributed to Horace Greeley, who, according to Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, gave the latter this advice in September 1851 (see quot. 1891).
The American idiom (c) relates to the opportunity and space that "going west" gave to European-American settlers in the westward expansion of the United States. (Safe to say it did not offer the same promise to the people already living there.) Going west then became a metaphor for seizing opportunity. In contrast, the British senses all seem to relate to the west as the place where the sun goes to bed: it is a place of endings and darkness.
Postscript: Julian Walker, who writes about English in World War I, has written about gone west here. It includes Eric Partridge's musings about the possibility of cross-contamination between the American and 'death' senses. (Thanks to Tony Thorne for tweeting about it.)
But the Pet Shop Boys version had a different vibe. Here I cut-and-paste from Wikipedia on the critical reception to their cover (emphasis added):
Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic said the song is a "bizarrely moving" cover. Larry Flick from Billboard commented, "Nothing better captures the tone of bittersweet joy and drama that permeates Very than PSB's cover of the Village People nugget, 'Go West'. Covered with thick layers of pillowy synths, the track swaps the male-bonding vibe of the original with a wistful demeanor that's lined with a pensive subtext of loss". In the single review, he described it as a "gorgeous reading", adding that Neil Tennant "gives the happy, male-bonding lyrics a wistful, almost melancholy edge—an odd but successful contrast to the fist-waving chants at the chorus".The video was notable for its use of Soviet imagery, putting the East–West axis far beyond what Horace Greeley was referring to. But it also has a definite afterlife vibe, with central placement of what surely seems to be a Stairway to Heaven. The West=Heaven (death) connection is helped along by the original Village People lyrics, which promise that life will be "peaceful" in the "open skies".
I am the happy, happy holder of a ticket to see Pet Shop Boys on their 2023 tour, so I do my best to ask them about this from my position in the umpteenth row. Will report back in late June.
But what about go south?
All the go south quotations in the OED are American, and their etymology indicates that it all started with talk of with stock market prices "going south". Their first citation is from 1920, but usage only seems to pick up in the 1970s, with verbs like head and turn, and with go south (applied far beyond market prices) predominating in this century.
3. colloquial (originally Stock Market). Downward or lower in value, price, or quality; in or into a worse condition or position. Esp. in to head (also go) south.south of: lower than, worse than.
A downward-pointing arrow is common to the graphic treatment of "south" in the maps we're most used to. A downward-pointing slope, as in this illustration, indicates falls in prices. It also seems to equate downward-trending prices with going to Hell:
This is all part of a more general conceptual metaphor UP=GOOD/DOWN=BAD. Given (a) the deep roots of that metaphor and (b) the co-existence of a different meaning of go west in AmE, it's no wonder that the BrE go west feels unintuitive as a metaphor to (at least some) Americans.
