Word.ws English Dictionary

went

/wɛnt//wɛnt/

went is the simple past of go.

went is the past participle of go.

went is the simple past and past participle of wend.

Meaning of go

Verb

go (third-person singular simple present goes, present participle going, simple past went or (obsolete) yode or (nonstandard) goed, past participle gone or (nonstandard) went)

  1. (intransitive) To move through space (especially to or through a place). (May be used of tangible things such as people or cars, or intangible things such as moods or information.)
    • Why don’t you go with us?
    Synonyms:
    move, fare, tread, draw, drift, wend, cross
  2. (intransitive) To move or travel through time (either literally—in a fictional or hypothetical situation in which time travel is possible—or in one's mind or knowledge of the historical record). (See also go back.)
    • Yesterday was the second-wettest day on record; you have to go all the way back to 1896 to find a day when more rain fell.
    Synonyms:
    move, fare, tread, draw, drift, wend, cross
  3. (intransitive) To navigate (to a file or folder on a computer, a site on the internet, a memory, etc.).
    • For the best definitions, go to wiktionary.org
    Synonyms:
    move, fare, tread, draw, drift, wend, cross
  4. To move (a particular distance, or in a particular fashion).
    • We've only gone twenty miles today.
    Synonyms:
    move, fare, tread, draw, drift, wend, cross
  5. (intransitive) To move or travel in order to do something, or to do something while moving.
    • We went swimming.
    Synonyms:
    move, fare, tread, draw, drift, wend, cross
  6. (intransitive) To leave; to move away.
    • Please don't go!

See all 86 meanings of go

Meaning of wend

Verb

wend (third-person singular simple present wends, present participle wending, simple past and past participle wended or (archaic) went)

  1. (transitive) To direct (one's way or course); pursue one's way; proceed upon some course or way.
    • We wended our weary way westward.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To turn; change, to adapt.
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To turn; make a turn; go round; veer.
    • with the prowe at both ends, so as they need not to wend or hold waterc. 1611, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse on the Invention of Ships &c.
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To pass away; disappear; depart; vanish.

See all 7 meanings of wend

Noun

went (plural wents)

  1. (obsolete) A course; a way, a path; a journey.
    • But here my wearie teeme, nigh over spent, / Shall breathe it selfe awhile after so long a went.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    gaed, eode, yead, yede, yode, gone, wended

Proper noun capitalized: Went

Went (countable and uncountable, plural Wents)

  1. A surname from Middle English.
  2. The River Went, a river in West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire, England, a tributary of the River Don. It forms the boundary between South Yorkshire and both North Yorkshire and the East Riding in its lower reaches.

Synonyms of went

Forms of went

Noun
pluralwents
Proper noun
pluralWents

Origin of went

Originally the simple past and past participle of wend, but now the past of go due to suppletion. While wend is akin to wind, compare typologically Russian смота́ться (smotátʹsja), сма́тываться (smátyvatʹsja), умота́ть (umotátʹ), ума́тывать (umátyvatʹ) (akin to мота́ть (motátʹ)).

Topographic surname, from Middle English went (“crossroad, passage”).

Words formed from went

Phrases with went

188 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with went

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about went

What does went mean?
Went means a course; a way, a path; a journey.
What is went the simple past of?
Went is the simple past of go.
What part of speech is went?
Went can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce went?
Went is pronounced /wɛnt/ (UK).
What is the plural of went?
The plural of went is wents.

Words near went in the dictionary

  1. Wensleydales
  2. Wenstrom
  3. Wenstroms
  4. Wensu
  5. Wensum
  6. went
  7. went a cropper
  8. went a long way
  9. went a mucker
  10. went a raker
  11. went about

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went (page history and authors); Went (page history and authors); go (page history and authors); wend (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-went.wav, en-us-went.ogg.

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