(wĕnt)
verb- Past tense of go1.
- Archaic A past tense and a past participle of wend.
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
ēode, 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
ēode. 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.”
