go in for

present singular third person goes in for · participle present going in for · past went in for · participle past gone in for

1. To enter a competition.
2. colloquialTo have an interest in or approve of something.

   "I hope she doesn't go in for big purple orchids," Miss Tinkham said to Mrs. Rasmussen, "there are so many pretty kinds."

   2016, Mary Lasswell, Let's Go For Broke

3. colloquialTo engage oneself or take part in something.

   Jem, there's a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don't go in for statistics.

   1854, Charles Dickens, “Mr. James Harthouse”, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, 2nd book (Reaping), page 148

   2 more examples

   It ain't their fault; I know heaps of nice girls who feel it horribly. What can they do? they can't go in for cricket and football.

   1876, Margaret Oliphant, Phoebe Junior, page 270

   "Why on earth do you go in for track?" I asked him. And then he explained that he thought that, if you wanted to be an all-around man, you ought to cultivate some form of athletics— he's actually taken up pole-vaulting: isn't that a ghastly thought?

   1979, Edmund Wilson, American Earthquake, page 140