Word.ws English Dictionary

went short

went short is the simple past of go short.

Meaning of go short

Verb

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

  1. (UK, intransitive) To have an insufficient amount.
    • My parents were very poor, and we often went short of food.
  2. To sell a financial product (such as a share) now, even though one does not presently own it, in the hope of buying it more cheaply for delivery at a later date, so as to profit from a fall in price below the price at which one sold it; cf. go long.

Questions about went short

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

Words near went short in the dictionary

  1. went round
  2. went round in circles
  3. went round the houses
  4. went round with
  5. went set
  6. went short
  7. went sing
  8. went slap off on
  9. went snake
  10. went so far as
  11. went soft

Source and license

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