go through the mill

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go through the mill (third-person singular simple present goes through the mill, present participle going through the mill, simple past went through the mill, past participle gone through the mill)

1. (idiomatic) To experience the suffering or discipline necessary to bring one to a certain degree of knowledge or skill, or to a certain mental state.
2. (UK, slang, obsolete) To go through bankruptcy.
   • 1877, The Accountant, volume 3, page 3:

     All know the high estimation debtors held the Act 1861, by the number who went "through the mill" at the close of 1869.

• (bankruptcy): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary (under "Mill")