went ape
went ape is the simple past of go ape.
Meaning of go ape
Verb
go ape (third-person singular simple present goes ape, present participle going ape, simple past went ape, past participle gone ape)
- To become wildly excited or enthusiastic.
- To become very angry.
- "Forgot to tell you. Some reporter found out we had a Russkie up here and tried to bluff his way onto the floor. A nurse stopped him. Admiral Blackburn found out and went ape. The whole floor's sealed off. What's the big secret, anyway?"1984, Tom Clancy, “The Eleventh Day: Monday, 13 December”, in The Hunt for Red October, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, →ISBN, page 267
Questions about went ape
- What is went ape the simple past of?
- Went ape is the simple past of go ape.
Words near went ape in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: went ape (page history and authors); go ape (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: “went ape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/went_ape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
