Word.ws English Dictionary

went belly-up

went belly-up is the simple past of go belly-up.

Meaning of go belly-up

Verb

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

  1. (informal) To die.
  2. (informal) To fail or fold; especially, to be closed or shut down, or go out of business.
    • I was sorry to hear that my favorite little restaurant went belly-up.
    Synonyms:
    go bankrupt

Questions about went belly-up

What is went belly-up the simple past of?
Went belly-up is the simple past of go belly-up.

Words near went belly-up in the dictionary

  1. went balls up
  2. went bananas
  3. went bankrupt
  4. went batshit
  5. went begging
  6. went belly-up
  7. went below
  8. went berserk
  9. went between
  10. went beyond
  11. went beyond the pale

Source and license

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