go to town on

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Verb

go to town on (third-person singular simple present goes to town on, present participle going to town on, simple past went to town on, past participle gone to town on)

1. (idiomatic) To devour or consume (something); to enthusiastically or assiduously work on (something); to tear into (something).
   • 2011 October, Wellesley Wild, “Seahorse Seashell Party”, in Family Guy, season 10, episode 2, spoken by Meg:

     Is this coming from my role model mother? The shoplifter, the drug addict, the porn star, the whore who let Gene Simmons and Bill Clinton go to town on her?

Further reading

• Eric Partridge (2005) “go to town on”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volumes 2 (J–Z), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1995.