adjective General Slang

Gone

/ɡɔːn/ · adjective · slang

So deeply into the music or moment that you've left ordinary reality behind — totally absorbed and excellent.

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Definitions

1

Carried away by music or feeling, lost in it to the point of transcendence.

“By the second chorus the whole band was gone.”
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2

Excellent, superb — applied to anything that hits the heights ('real gone').

“That's a real gone arrangement, daddy-o.”
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3

Mentally elsewhere; spaced out or under the influence.

“Don't bother him, he's gone — way out there.”
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Gone In A Sentence

The drummer was gone, eyes shut, just feeling it.
She's a real gone chick when the bongos start.
One sip of that coffee and the poetry had me gone.

Origin & Usage

From 1940s jazz musicians' slang meaning lost in the music; 'real gone' became a stock phrase of praise. The Beat Generation took it as a central word for ecstatic absorption, immortalized in lines like Kerouac's writing on jazz.

Variants real gonegone, man, gone
Tags #beatnik#1950s#beat-generation#vintage#music

People Also Ask

What does gone mean in beatnik slang?

It means swept up in the music or moment to the point of transcendence — and by extension, excellent. 'Real gone' was high praise.

Where did gone come from?

From 1940s jazz culture, describing a player so deep in the music they'd left the ordinary world behind. Beatniks adopted it wholesale.

Is 'real gone' the same as 'gone'?

'Real gone' is the intensified, idiomatic form — pure praise meaning 'fantastic' — while plain 'gone' can also literally mean absorbed or spaced out.

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