Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A turn or change of course; a turning or veering; hence, a rolling or tossing about.
- n. A course; a passage; a path.
- n. A furlong of land.
- n. See wend and go.
- n. An obsolete preterit and past participle of ween.
Wiktionary
- v. Simple past of go.
- v. nonstandard Past participle of go
- v. archaic Simple past tense and past participle of wend.
- n. obsolete A course; a way, a path; a journey.
GNU Webster's 1913
Etymologies
- Originally the past tense of wend. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English wende, past tense and past participle of wendan, to go. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You see after those pics in the newspapers of you giving Katya the kiss of life after that see we were flooded simply flooded with inquiries and all the cheaper seats went in a flash and the reception tickets, too all went ”
“The mother and son were very near one to the other, close in their sympathies, and there can be but little doubt that the thoughts of the mother as she was struck went out, and perhaps _went strongly out_, to her boy who was now away from home.”
“_And she went -- and she went_!" rumbled Pat in the bass.”
“Denum æðeling tō yppan, _the prince_ (Bēowulf), _honored by the Danes, went to the high seat_, 1815; ēode ... under inwit-hrōf, 3124; pl. þǣr swīðferhðe sittan ēodon, 493; ēodon him þā tōgēanes, _went to meet him_,”
“Denum äðeling tô yppan, _the prince_ (Beówulf), _honored by the Danes, went to the high seat_, 1815; eode ... under inwit-hrôf, 3124; pl. þær swîðferhðe sittan eodon, 493; eodon him þâ tôgeánes, _went to meet him_,”
“If any Chriftian went to any Corner of the Worlds how far fbever diftant, where there ware Chriftians; and i£ he was ihftru&ed with Commendatory Letters, by thofe from. whom he went* he was forthwith Admitted to Communion with thofe to whom he came.”
Internet Archive: The Reasonableness of a Toleration: Enquir'd Into, Purely on Church ...
“•went in the morning, went thro* the warren about Weft Dean; here he dropt, Sir Harry LiddelJ, down to Benderton; from here Lord Harry funk, up to Bender, ton Down to the Hay's bufhes,”
“I went 30 dollars over budget last month and I don’t even know where some of it went ”
“R&S gradually lost steam, moseying along till the early 00s, at which point the label went on indefinite hiatus.”
The Guardian: Dance music gets nostalgic: the disco and rave reissue boom
“Eventually, Duke provided me second-year students to help with each of my classes, but as the term went on, that volunteer tutor system broke down.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘went’.
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Past tense in -t.
Some words are always like this. Some only when British or archaic. Some are just fun.
built, spent, bent, spilt, spoilt, ruint, thought, caught, brought, wisht, pent, spelt and 74 more...
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kid conversation starters
My kids and I often have great conversations about words. Sometimes, we wonder if a word is really a word; if it's being used correctly; its derivation; correct usage; etc. So many fine details for...
seeable, stereo, swam, misogynist, visible, went, condescending
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aparrish's Words
the, this, and, a, that, i, me, you, him, her, she, he and 96 more...
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hober's Words
anglosphere, wiki, slither, cylon, satchel, faustian, ragamuffin, frak, salient, fervid, tartan, snowclone and 299 more...
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Activated Phonemes
This list was generated by first taking a letter from the alphabet, or any of the initial cluster set of phonesthemes compiled by the ingenious Benjamin Shisler) and then sticking one of the suffix...
bing, ding, ging, jing, ling, ming, king, ping, ring, sing, ting, wing and 189 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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March2022AV
drop in, drop by, settle, screwing up, worn, wear, bought, devastating, heaviness, entrepreneurial, hitchhiking, falling out and 4 more...
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Testlist
What are these lists for?
Tweets
Looking for tweets for went.
arcadia What about "Wendt", as in "George"? Mar 20, 2009
qroqqa I can't think of any other former suppletive verbs, even in Old English; but in Present-day English you might choose to include 'must', which for past tense has to switch to 'had to'. Mar 20, 2009
milosrdenstvi Aside from "be", which, as I am told, is irregular in every language but Quechua (this may or may not be correct), there is only one verb in the English language which has completely different stems for two of its tenses or cases. There are significant changes in vowel (i.e. see vs. saw) and sometimes a single consonant gets changed around a bit (i.e. have vs. had) but only in go does the past tense change to something completely different: went.
I am told that there used to be a lot more of these in English, but most of them dropped out. (There are still plenty in languages such as Greek.)
Interestingly, went appears to come to us by way of wend, or maybe wended. This can be seen in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke... Mar 20, 2009