"It goes to"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

The legal usage is perhaps a broadening of "go to" in the "go to show"
sense ('to serve as evidence for'), as in "The evidence goes to
motive/intent".

--Ben Zimmer


On Feb 1, 2008 2:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I've been hearing this on Court TV for a dozen years, I'd say.  "This goes to" means
> "This relates to or addresses."
>
>  I associate it with lawyers.
>
>  JL
>
>
> Erik Hoover <grinchy at GRINCHY.COM> wrote:
>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Erik Hoover
>
> Subject: "It goes to"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I was on a business trip this week with my Dallas-born co-worker, and
> I noticed his frequent used of a phrase I found unusual: "It goes
> to..."
>
> He used it not as one might use "It goes to show you" but more with a
> sense of "The gist is"
>
> I Googled a bit for "it goes to the idea", "it goes to the point",
> "it goes to the matter"
>
> "it goes to the idea" and "it goes to the matter" are scarce but
> produce interesting results.
>
> Here's a two-fer:
>
> "But the whole story? Egad, no. The whole story in Atlanta is too
> complex for that. It goes to something more mysterious and ethereal
> and, thus, of severely limited value in baseball's statistics-
> oriented society. It goes to the idea of multiple minds working
> together in some sort of weird harmony, of organizational leaders
> being pretty comfortably in sync. You probably can see it more easily
> than explain it."
>
> -ESPN columnist Mark Kreider. October 11, 2007.
>
> Is this new, old, regional, spreading, or just an aexample of the
> protean utility of the verb 'to go.'?
>
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