Word.ws English Dictionary

went backwards

went backwards is the simple past of go backwards.

Meaning of go backwards

Verb

go backwards (third-person singular simple present goes backwards, present participle going backwards, simple past went backwards, past participle gone backwards)

  1. To decline or deteriorate; to get worse.
  2. (obsolete, slang) To defecate; to visit the privy.
    • [O]ne day he expressed his desire of going backwards with such natural imitation of his purpose, that every body in the room firmly believed he had actually overshot himself, and fortified their nostrils accordingly.1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

Questions about went backwards

What is went backwards the simple past of?
Went backwards is the simple past of go backwards.

Words near went backwards in the dictionary

  1. went back in time
  2. went back on
  3. went back to
  4. went back to the drawing board
  5. went back to the tools
  6. went backwards
  7. went bad
  8. went ballistic
  9. went balls up
  10. went bananas
  11. went bankrupt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went backwards (page history and authors); go backwards (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 backwards.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/went_backwards. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.