went

Pluralwents

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense of go.

   The detectives went straight to the warehouse after the tip.

   Prices went up sharply during the drought.

   Note

   Go borrowed this past tense from another verb: went first belonged to wend and was taken over as the past of go, a swap known as suppletion. That is why go and went share no letters. In standard English it is only the simple past (they went home); perfect tenses take gone, and had went is the nonstandard participle.

2. 2
   verbnonstandard

   Past participle of go. Nonstandard: standard English uses gone.

   He had went and told everyone before I could explain.

   By noon she had already went to three separate meetings.

   Note

   Standard English puts gone after have, and went in that slot is nonstandard, though it is old. Elisha Coles rhymes "would have went" with "bent" in 1671, Abel F. Fitch writes "might have went" in 1851, and Douglas Nix's Al-Qaeda Hunter (2010) has "must have went." The usual home is after a modal plus have. In edited writing, use gone.

3. 3
   verbarchaic

   Simple past and past participle of wend. Archaic: wend now uses wended, and went is the past of go.

   Note

   Here went still belongs to its first owner, wend, which explains the everyday past of go. It keeps wend's transitive pattern of directing a course, so it takes the way as its object: they went their way, he went his lonely road. Because it is archaic, it fits period narrative or verse. In plain prose, the same sentence reads as ordinary go.

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