Word.ws English Dictionary

gone down the wrong way

gone down the wrong way is the past participle of go down the wrong way.

Meaning of go down the wrong way

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To go down the trachea (windpipe) in one's throat instead of the esophagus (the tube in the throat for swallowed food and fluids), typically resulting in coughing or choking.
    • She took a big drink of milk and it went down the wrong way. She was coughing for the next two minutes.

Questions about gone down the wrong way

What is gone down the wrong way the past participle of?
Gone down the wrong way is the past participle of go down the wrong way.

Words near gone down the wrong way in the dictionary

  1. gone down the toilet
  2. gone down the tube
  3. gone down the tubes
  4. gone down the wrong pipe
  5. gone down the wrong throat
  6. gone down the wrong way
  7. gone down with
  8. gone downhill
  9. gone downtown
  10. gone Dutch
  11. gone easy

Source and license

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