Word.ws English Dictionary

goes native

goes native is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go native.

Meaning of go native

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To adopt the lifestyle or outlook of local inhabitants, especially when dwelling in a colonial region.
    • […]for St. Xavier's looks down on boys who ‘go native all-together.’ One must never forget that one is a Sahib, and that some day, when examinations are passed, one will command natives.1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter VII, in Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 177
  2. (idiomatic) Of a contractor or consultant, to begin working directly as an employee for a company and cease to work through a contracting firm or agency.
    • […] we had to stop putting job-hunting colonels in charge of AFPRO detachments in the plants. It almost always happened that they went native and began to represent the contractor rather than the government.1989, Arthur Ernest Fitzgerald, The Pentagonists, page 204

Questions about goes native

What is goes native the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Goes native is the third-person singular simple present indicative of go native.

Words near goes native in the dictionary

  1. goes missing
  2. goes moggy
  3. goes nap
  4. goes nap on
  5. goes narrow
  6. goes native
  7. goes negative
  8. goes night-night
  9. goes nowhere
  10. goes nowhere fast
  11. goes nuclear

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goes native (page history and authors); go native (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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