Word.ws English Dictionary

going wrong

going wrong is the present participle and gerund of go wrong.

Meaning of go wrong

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To worsen; to fail or go amiss; to have a bad outcome.
    • Everything seems to be going very badly wrong today.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To malfunction.
    • The vending machine went wrong and dispensed five cans of drink at once.
  3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become wicked or depraved.
    • Mr. Blue Sky / Please tell us why / You had to hide away for so long (so long) / Where did we go wrong?1977, Electric Light Orchestra, “Mr. Blue Sky”, in Out of the Blue

Questions about going wrong

What is going wrong the present participle and gerund of?
Going wrong is the present participle and gerund of go wrong.

Words near going wrong in the dictionary

  1. going with the flow of traffic
  2. going with the turf
  3. going with the wind
  4. going without
  5. going without saying
  6. going wrong
  7. going, going, gone
  8. going-away parties
  9. going-away party
  10. going-over
  11. going-overs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going wrong (page history and authors); go wrong (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: “going wrong.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_wrong. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.