Picture a hand, or a pair of eyes, moving slowly across the whole surface of something — from one end to the other, missing nothing. A going-over is that one complete pass. What the pass is for is what changes from meaning to meaning: to find faults, to get the thing clean, or, in one rough British use, to hurt a person.
可以想成有一隻手、或一雙眼睛，在東西表面上從這頭慢慢移到那頭，一處都沒漏掉。「a going-over」就是那「整個經過一遍」的一次動作。至於經過是為了什麼，就看場合：可能是為了找出毛病，可能是為了把它弄乾淨，也可能——在英式口語裡——是把這股力道用在人身上。三個意思共用同一個 give something／somebody a going-over 的骨架，所以真正決定意思的，是中間放的是什麼。