Word.ws English Dictionary

went with the flow

went with the flow is the simple past of go with the flow.

Meaning of go with the flow

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To act as others are acting, conforming to common behavior patterns with an attitude of calm acceptance.
    • “Look, you know, I go with the flow based on what the campaign wants to do,” Priebus told NBC’s Meet the Press. “I think Kellyanne is doing a phenomenal job. I don’t know Steve Bannon, to tell you the truth, very well.”2016 August 28, Tom McCarthy, quoting Reince Priebus, “Reince Priebus on Trump campaign hires: ‘I go with the flow’”, in The Guardian
    Antonyms:
    go against the flow

Questions about went with the flow

What is went with the flow the simple past of?
Went with the flow is the simple past of go with the flow.

Words near went with the flow in the dictionary

  1. went wide
  2. went wild
  3. went with
  4. went with a swing
  5. went with one's gut
  6. went with the flow
  7. went with the flow of traffic
  8. went with the territory
  9. went with the turf
  10. went with the wind
  11. went without

Source and license

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