Word.ws English Dictionary

went under

went under is the simple past of go under.

Meaning of go under

Verb

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

  1. To descend into a body of water; to founder.
    • The boat was too heavy and went under.
  2. (idiomatic) To collapse or fail, e.g. by going bankrupt.
    • In the crisis, the company was forced to reduce its costs in order to avoid going under.
  3. (idiomatic) To die.
    • If we don't get him to a doctor, he'll go under for sure.
  4. (idiomatic) To be named; to call oneself.
    • He goes under the name of Mr X to remain anonymous.
  5. To enter a trance, state of hypnosis, etc.
    • "But I went under nicely and I am glad there were some fine materializations."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
  6. (Australia, slang) To be imprisoned.

Questions about went under

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

Words near went under in the dictionary

  1. went together
  2. went toilet
  3. went too far
  4. went towards
  5. went tutti-frutti
  6. went under
  7. went underground
  8. went up
  9. went up against
  10. went up for
  11. went up in flames

Source and license

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