get lost

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

get lost

1. (idiomatic, colloquial, dismissal) Used to tell somebody to go away or leave one alone.

• (used to tell someone to go away): beat it, push off, go away, take a hike, piss off, bugger off, clear off, away with you!, vamoose!
• See also Thesaurus:go away

• Telling someone to "get lost!" is slightly more rude than, for example, "beat it!" but less rude or vulgar than "bugger off"; polite ways to ask someone to leave include "please leave me alone" or the more indirect "I need time to myself at the moment".
• Most verbs that may be used to refer to oneself leaving quickly (such as scat or vamoose) can be used as synonyms for "get lost" when said to another person.
• "Getting lost", the state of losing one's bearings, should not be confused with "get lost!".

get lost (third-person singular simple present gets lost, present participle getting lost, simple past got lost, past participle (chiefly British) got lost or (North America, archaic in UK) gotten lost)

1. (intransitive) To lose one's way.

   Don't you have a map? How did we get lost?

   I got lost in his reasoning.

2. (intransitive) To be absent, to seem to be absent.

   The violins get lost with the rest of the music.

3. (intransitive, usually in imperative and reported speech, idiomatic) To exit from the scene.

   I don't want to have to tell you again: Get lost!

   After things calmed down, Fred told Jack to just get lost.

   Jack did a good job of getting lost: nobody saw him for 4 years.

• Goettls