Word.ws English Dictionary

went wrong

went wrong is the simple past of go wrong.

Meaning of go wrong

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To worsen; to fail or go amiss; to have a bad outcome.
    • Everything seems to be going very badly wrong today.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To malfunction.
    • The vending machine went wrong and dispensed five cans of drink at once.
  3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become wicked or depraved.
    • Mr. Blue Sky / Please tell us why / You had to hide away for so long (so long) / Where did we go wrong?1977, Electric Light Orchestra, “Mr. Blue Sky”, in Out of the Blue

Questions about went wrong

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

Words near went wrong in the dictionary

  1. went with the territory
  2. went with the turf
  3. went with the wind
  4. went without
  5. went without saying
  6. went wrong
  7. Wentbridge
  8. wente
  9. wenten
  10. Wentes
  11. wentest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: went wrong (page history and authors); go wrong (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “went wrong.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/went_wrong. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.