Far gone

Far gone means something or someone is in such a bad condition there is no hope for it. E.g. A sick person may be too far gone to get better.

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Phrase: Far gone

In the sixties, before he was 007, Roger Moore played Simon Templar in The Saint.

He had a cool car, too.

It was a Volvo P1800 like the one in the picture, which is unfortunately too far gone to be saved now.

I know when you think of Volvo, you don’t think of cool sports cars, but The Saint had one.


Anyways, our phrase for today is far gone, and it means something or someone is in such a bad condition there is no hope for it.


The car in the picture is now a hoopty too far gone to be saved, but it was one sweet ride in its day.

You may hear the phrase far gone used to describe a person who has had way too much alcohol to drink or who is very near death.

For example, you may hear that a person was unfortunately involved in a traffic accident and brought to a hospital by ambulance, but by the time they arrived, they were too far gone to be saved.

This means their condition had worsened to such a state that the doctors could not save them.

The same can be said about drunk people.

At a certain point, a person has had so much to drink that there’s no way they can sober up again without sleeping it off.

Perhaps the person involved in the traffic accident above was hit by a drunk driver.

Usually, the police will question a driver involved in a crash.

If they are drunk and too far gone to interview, the police will arrest them and wait until the next day when they are sober.

Then there are what we call lost causes.

A lost cause is someone who is beyond help for some reason.

A drug addict, hardened criminal or slothful person may be too far gone for us to help.

In such cases, there’s not much we can do to help them.


Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 81.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100. 



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