To go for, verb. phr. (colloquial).—1. To attempt; to tackle; to resolve upon; to make for (q.v.).
1871. John Hay, Jim Bludso. He see’d his duty, a dead-sure thing—And he went for it thar and then.
1890. Athenæum, 22 Mar., p. 366, c. 1. The authors have spared neither their creatures nor the reader one iota; whenever an unpleasant effect was obtainable, they straightway seem to have gone for it with unflinching zest.
1891. N. Gould, Double Event, p. 221. Some men had gone for half a dozen, others for two or three, and very few for a single.
1892. Hume Nisbet, Bushranger’s Sweetheart, p. 118. We are strong, my boy, strong now, and are going in for the slugging of books also, as well as the immorality of trade.
2. (colloquial).—To attack with violence and directness, whether manually or with the tongue.
1871. Morning Advertiser, 2 Feb., ‘A curtain lecture.’ On … arrival home the derelict husband is to be gone for in the most approved style of the late lamented Mrs. Caudle.
1883. James Payn, Thicker than Water, ch. xxxvii. There were occasions … when Charley could hardly help going for the legs of that lofty philosopher, for higher he could not hit him.
1889. Polytechnic Magazine, 24 Oct., p. 261. He went for the jam tarts unmercifully.
1889. Star, 24 Aug., p. 4, c. 2. As the enlightened tailor still declined to pay the blackmail one of the anti-machinists went for him with a chopper.