Gone south?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Gone south?

Reader question:

What does this quote describing a basketball game – "Our offense has gone south completely in the second half" – mean? And "gone south" in particular?

My comments:

It means they have been unable to score – they could during the first half, but their hot hands have since gone cold.

As I prepared for writing this morning, I received an email (a junk mail in fact) titled "Don't let everything go south".

Ah well, you'd better not.

Go south?

Well, on the map, north points upward, south down. The first map makers obviously were from the northern hemisphere. Henceforth we (in the northern hemisphere) talk of going to Inner Mongolia "up in the north" and Guangzhou "down in the south". North is up, south is down. Up is good. We talk of the stock market going up – not now, of course. Down is no good – we talk of someone going downhill. Likewise, when someone looks down, he's depressed.

When situations look up, the future is brighter than it is now. In David Copperfield, Mrs. Micawber talks of her poor (yes, poor in every sense of the word) husband as "a man of great talent". Here's the passage:

"My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon the spot."