go the way of all flesh

English

Etymology

Equivalent to Danish gå al kødets gang, German den Weg allen Fleisches gehen.

Pronunciation

Audio (US): (file)

Verb

go the way of all flesh (third-person singular simple present goes the way of all flesh, present participle going the way of all flesh, simple past went the way of all flesh, past participle gone the way of all flesh)

(euphemistic) To die; to follow a course leading to death or extinction.
- 1624, John Donne, chapter XVII, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 434:
  [T]hough the body be going the vvay of all fleſh, yet that ſoule is going the vvay of all Saints.
- 1879–1888, Thomas Hardy, “(please specify the page)”, in Wessex Tales: Strange, Lively, and Commonplace […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1888, →OCLC:
  The first stranger handed his neighbor the family mug—a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh.
- 1921 September, John Galsworthy, chapter 11, in To Let, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, part III, page 310:
  What could one do? Buy them and stick them in a lumber-room? No; they had to go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out.
- 1967 August 18, “Tops & Bottoms”, in Time‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2008-12-15:
  On the U.S. West Coast, the clubs and restaurants that feature topless female entertainers and waitresses also seemed to be going the way of all flesh. In Los Angeles, 20% of the joints have closed.
- 2006, Laura Wertheimer, “Clerical Dissent, Popular Piety, and Sanctity in 14th-Century Peterborough”, in Journal of British Studies, volume 45, number 1, page 3:
  Laurence of Oxford went the way of all flesh on the gallows.

Synonyms