pt. of go
Origin of went
old past tense of wend, used to replace missing form of go
verb
Went is defined as to have gone somewhere in the past.
An example of went used as a verb is in the sentence, "I went to the store yesterday," which means that I traveled to the store yesterday.
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"went." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 11 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT>.
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went. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT
went
Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"went." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 11 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT>.
APA Style
went. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT
went
verb
Past tense of go1
Origin of went
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 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.”THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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MLA Style
"went." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 11 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT>.
APA Style
went. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT
Verb
Noun
(plural wents)
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.5:
- But here my wearie teeme, nigh over spent, / Shall breathe it selfe awhile after so long a went.
Origin
Originally the past tense of wend.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
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Cite this page
MLA Style
"went." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 11 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT>.
APA Style
went. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/WENT
Sentence Examples
- His moods came and went like summer storms.
- The chickens went to roost.
- Maybe because he went into hiding from his family.
- He pushed the bushes aside and went a little farther.
- The brother, Fabrice, went to Columbia for a while - job related.
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