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)
- To worsen; to fail or go amiss; to have a bad outcome.
- Everything seems to be going very badly wrong today.
- Synonyms:
- atrophy, break down, crack, decline, deteriorate, degenerate, devolve, confound, fade, fall off
- To malfunction.
- The vending machine went wrong and dispensed five cans of drink at once.
- 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
- Synonyms:
- break bad, go bad, go to the bad, stray
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
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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “going wrong.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_wrong. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
