Word.ws English Dictionary

how goes it

how goes it phrase: an informal greeting roughly equivalent to how are you.

Phrase

how goes it?

  1. (idiomatic) An informal greeting roughly equivalent to how are you.
    • Here comes the Lady Paulina's Steward: hee can deliuer you more. How goes it now (Sir.)c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • ‘Scotty, man, how goes it?’ Bennie said, patting me warmly on the back as we shook hands.2010, Jennifer Egan, “X's and O's”, in A Visit from the Goon Squad

Origin of how goes it

The phrase is a regular Early Modern English equivalent of how's it going (when neither progressive tenses nor do-support were obligatory). As such it could have survived through regional dialects. Nevertheless modern usage is likely a calque of German wie geht es, perhaps additionally also Dutch hoe gaat het, Danish hvordan går det, etc.

Questions about how goes it

What does how goes it mean?
How goes it means an informal greeting roughly equivalent to how are you.
What part of speech is how goes it?
How goes it is a phrase.

Words near how goes it in the dictionary

  1. how do you sleep at night
  2. how do you spell this word
  3. how embarrassment
  4. how far
  5. how farest thou
  6. how goes it
  7. how goes the battle
  8. how goes the enemy
  9. how goes the war
  10. how long
  11. how long is a piece of string

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: how goes it (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-how goes it.ogg.

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