went

went  (wnt)

v.

1. Past tense of go¹.

2. Archaic A past tense and a past participle of wend.

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[Middle English, from Old English wende, past tense and past participle of wendan, to go.]

Word History: Why do we say went and not goed? Go has always had an unusual past tense, formed from a completely different root from its present tense. The replacement within a series of inflected forms of one form by a completely unrelated form is called suppletion. (Another, even more extreme, example of suppletion in English is found in the paradigm be, am, are, was, whose forms are originally from four different verbal roots.) The past tense of go in Old English was ode, formed from an unrelated root that has no other verb forms in English. Its modern replacement, went, derives from old forms of the modern verb wend. In Middle English the original past tense and past participle of wenden, "to go, turn," were wended and wend, respectively. The forms wente and went appeared around 1200 and gradually displaced the older wended and wend. The new past tense wente also took on a new use as the past tense of go, replacing ode. By the beginning of the Modern English period, around 1500, went was no longer used in any other way and was therefore felt to be the normal past tense of go; at the same time, wend acquired the new form wended for its past tense and past participle, meaning "turned."

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went [wɛnt]

vb

the past tense of go

Translations

went go