go the way of

present singular third person goes the way of · participle present going the way of · past went the way of · participle past gone the way of

1. idiomaticTo end up the same way as; to undergo the same fate as.

   Vinyl records seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs [i.e. become extinct, or fallen out of common use].

   1 more example

   We now need to make coal-­ and gas-­fired power plants go the way of whale oil. And if you want to change the world, it helps first to have an alternative. People invented railways to replace horse-­drawn carriages, electricity to supplant steam engines, rock oil for whale oil, and the market –­ Adam Smith’s great invisible hand –­ ensured they took hold.

   2025 September 11, Kate Marvel, “‘We’ve done it before’: how not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster”, in The Guardian