Talk about synchronicity (or maybe it's serendipity): yesterday I started reading A Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch, and he talks about "go missing" being seen as objectionable by some. It was the first time I'd heard of it being problematic, but, then again, maybe it's because I'm British...

That "go missing" is, by your own admission, cop-speak is only another reason to eschew this fingernails-on-chalkboard expression.

Prof, McI.,

Hmm......... is the verb, "to go" (past tense, "went") one of those versatile ambitransitive verbs? A verb that requires a subject, but doesn't necessarily need an object, in all cases?

The awkwardness, or to your earlier point, the aesthetic dissatisfaction, of the phrase "went missing', for me, lies in the tacit implication that the person who disappeared had some intent in making themselves scarce, as if the state of "missing" could be some desired, physical destination, rather than merely a situational state of being.(Or more precisely, NOT being here, nor there. HA!)

It could also connotes a vague, open-ended catch-all term which 'the authorities' might use to keep all their options open, until more hard circumstantial evidence comes to light. The 'lost' individual, (or individuals), could have wandered off, been abducted, taken a hike-----any number of possible actions, intended, or otherwise.

So I guess "went missing" is as good as any other obfuscating tactic that law enforcement can come up with for the media until they narrow down the possibilities.

Of course, inanimate objects, personal possessions, and such, can "go missing", as well. "Where did I put those darn bifocals?"

Sadly, Including one's mind, or moral compass. HA!

ALEX

I think you're safe with "went missing" until you hear yourself say, "She done went missing on us" (or would that be, "She done gone missing on us"?)

Sometimes I think people complain about these things just so they have something to complain about.

In my youth as an editor "go missing" was generally a little too informal for UK newspapers. It's come along nicely, probably because it is so useful. Here's the excellent Lynnequist on the subject:

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/12/words-of-year-2009-staycation-and-go.html

Of course "go+adjective" idioms implying a change of state are common enough. Go crazy. Go quiet. Go easy. Go sick. Go Dutch.

Went missing has always sounded rustic to me. I apply the same logic to this phrase as Bryan Garner does to impact as a transitive verb. In his Modern American Usage, he calls the verb form unnecessary because its function is just as “ably performed” by the verbs affect or influence (p. 445). The same may be said, I think, of went missing: its function is just as ably (and more economically) performed by the verbs disappeared or vanished.

Apparently I read too many British mysteries, because it sounds perfectly normal to me.

it sounds perfectly normal to me, too.
with regard to cop-speak: while there are constructions that should be forbidden for obvious reasons ("non-life-threatening injuries" being the most grievous, surely), I would suggest that a term shouldn't be verboten in copy simply because it's cop-speak.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm on the cops' side on this one.
go figure.

"Goes missing" for me is as irritating as "turned up dead," or "turned up missing." Literally speaking, one can't "turn up" at all if one is dead or missing. How about "found dead" and "disappeared?" Or are those too direct? I don't know if those are "cop-speak" or Hollywood's idea of how police actually talk. I will say that I trust the police far more than I trust Hollywood.

Well, the argument from us Hollywood-cum-hollyhockers would be that (a) go missing is what we say, so buggerit, and (b) disappeared ain't the same because it carries the sense of "vanished into thin air", which ain't what we mean. And one can turn up dead, I fear, and many of the missing do.

To the extent that objections to go missing are that idiomatic expressions to not mean what they literally say, I have to answer, well, yeah.

Hmm..... sounds like someone just got off the 'turn up' truck, don't it?

I think i'll go make myself scarce, before I get into any more hot water.

Rest assured, I won't have 'gone missing', 'cause y'all can't get rid of me that darn easily.

Ta! Ta!

ALEX

If one is unfortunately dead, one doesn't "turn up," which implies one arrives, alive, someplace. One is discovered dead. Or found dead.

It's also true, from a literal standpoint, that "everything" can't "come up roses" -- the stems are too narrow, among many reasons -- but they wrote a whole song about that eventuality.

And inanimate objects can turn up, so it's a bit rough on dead bodies to exclude them.