gone north about

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

gone north about

1. (idiomatic, obsolete, nautical) Dead, of sailor or seaman whose cause of death was anything except by drowning.
   • 1827, William Bennett, Owain Goch‎:

     ..And he's gone on a cruise he liked better than the one you'd have had him; but that's no matter; I had better have gone north about twenty times over than come athwart you.

2. (idiomatic) Dead.

• Partridge, Eric and Beale, Paul (2002, Routledge) ."he's gone north about." A dictionary of slang and unconventional English: colloquialisms and catch phrases, fossilised jokes and puns, general nicknames, vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalised.
• Partridge, Eric and Beale, Paul (1986, Routledge). "gone north about." A dictionary of catch phrases: British and American, from the sixteenth century to the present day.