Word.ws English Dictionary

go to Canossa

go to Canossa verb: to submit to the pope.

Verb

go to Canossa (third-person singular simple present goes to Canossa, present participle going to Canossa, simple past went to Canossa, past participle gone to Canossa)

  1. (idiomatic) To submit to the pope.
  2. (idiomatic) To show humility, to be humbled.

Forms of go to Canossa

third-person singular presentgoes to Canossa
present participlegoing to Canossa
pastwent to Canossa
past participlegone to Canossa

Origin of go to Canossa

From the repentance of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII after his excommunication for appointing bishops.

Questions about go to Canossa

What does go to Canossa mean?
Go to Canossa means to submit to the pope.
What part of speech is go to Canossa?
Go to Canossa is a verb.
What is the past tense of go to Canossa?
The past tense of go to Canossa is went to Canossa.

Words near go to Canossa in the dictionary

  1. go to bed with
  2. go to bed with the chickens
  3. go to bed with the sun
  4. go to blazes
  5. go to Cain's
  6. go to Canossa
  7. go to earth
  8. go to extraordinary lengths
  9. go to grass
  10. go to great lengths
  11. go to ground

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go to Canossa (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “go to Canossa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_to_canossa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.