Word.ws English Dictionary

going

Syllables: go·ingUK/ˈɡəʊ.ɪŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

West Midlands/ˈɡuː.ɪŋ/ [ˈɡʊw.ɪŋɡ]

going verb: attending or visiting (a stated event, place, etc.) habitually or regularly. Also the present participle and gerund of go.

Verb

going

  1. (in-compounds) Attending or visiting (a stated event, place, etc.) habitually or regularly.
    • theatre-going, church-going, movie-going

Noun

going (countable and uncountable, plural goings)

  1. A departure.
    • Māna-Yood-Sushāī was before the beginning of the gods, and shall be after their going. […] After the going of the gods there will be no small worlds nor big.1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC
    • But he found it strange to think […] of all these little things that cluster round the comings, and the stayings, and the goings, that he would know nothing of them, nothing of what they had been, as long as he lived, […]1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
  2. The suitability of ground for riding, walking etc.
    • The going was very difficult over the ice.
  3. Progress.
    • We made good going for a while, but then we came to the price.
  4. (figuratively) Conditions for advancing in any way.
    • Not only were the streets not paved with gold, but the going was difficult for an immigrant.
  5. (in plural) Course of life; behaviour; doings; ways.
    • His eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 34:21
  6. The whereabouts (of something).
    • I can't find my sunglasses; you haven't seen the going of them, have you?
  7. The horizontal distance between the front of one step in a flight of stairs and the front of the next.
    • Each step had a rise of 170 mm and a going of 250 mm.

Adjective

going (not comparable)

  1. Likely to continue; viable.
    • He didn't want to make an unsecured loan to the business because it didn't look like a going concern.
  2. Current, prevailing.
    • The going rate for manual snow-shoveling is $25 an hour.
  3. (especially) Available.
    • He has the easiest job going.
    • Craig: Did you look at Tudor life? did you do a lot of studying about that?
      Natalie: Yeah, I was really geeky about it, I read every single book that was going.2013, Natalie Dormer, interview on, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson

Proper noun capitalized: Going

Going (plural Goings)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

going is also the present participle and gerund of go.

going meaning in Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi and Sanskrit

going in Hindi

departure
व्रजन vrajan
progress
चालू cālū

going in Kannada

ಹೋಗುವುದು

going in Punjabi

ਜਾ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ

going in Sanskrit

departure
व्रजन vrajana
progress
यामन् yāman

Examples of going in a sentence

  • I'm running a book on who is going to win the race.
  • I don't think he wants to go. — Yeah, well, we're going anyway, and he can deal.
  • The Boy Scouts were going to accept him as a member.

All 40 example sentences with going

Forms of going

Noun
pluralgoings
Proper noun
pluralGoings

Plural of going: goings

Origin of going

Verb form from Middle English goinge, goynge, gayng, variants of gonde, goonde, gaand, from Old English gānde, from Proto-Germanic *gēndz, present participle of Proto-Germanic *gēną, *gāną (“to go”), equivalent to go + -ing. Cognate with West Frisian geanend (“going”), Dutch gaand (“going”), German gehend (“going”), Danish gående (“going”), Swedish gående (“going”). Noun and adjective from Middle English going, goyng, gaing, gayng, equivalent to go + -ing. Compare German Gehung, Old English gang (“a going”). More at gang.

Words formed from going

Phrases with going

185 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with going

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about going

What does going mean?
Going means attending or visiting (a stated event, place, etc.) habitually or regularly.
What is going in Hindi?
Going in Hindi is व्रजन (vrajan), चालू (cālū). See Going meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is going?
Going can be a verb, a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce going?
Going is pronounced /ˈɡəʊ.ɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near going in the dictionary

  1. goiim
  2. goil
  3. goils
  4. goin
  5. goin'
  6. going
  7. going a cropper
  8. going a long way
  9. going a mucker
  10. going a raker
  11. going about

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going (page history and authors); Going (page history and authors); going (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); going (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-going.ogg.

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