Go (verb)
Encyclopedia
Go is an irregular English verb whose basic definition is "to move from one place to another". Be
and go are the only English
verbs with a suppletive
past tense.
of go are go, went, gone. In other respects, the modern English verb conjugates regularly. The irregularity of the principal parts is due to their disparate origin in definitely two and possibly three distinct Indo-European roots.
Unlike every other English verb except be, the preterite
(simple past tense) of go is not etymologically
related to its infinitive
. Instead, the preterite of go, went, descends from a variant of the preterite of wend, the descendant of Old English
wendan and Middle English
wenden. Old English wendan (modern wend) and gān (mod. go) shared semantic similarities. The similarities are evident in the sentence
"I'm wending my way home", which is equivalent to "I'm going home".
gon, goon, from Old English gān, from Proto-Germanic *gēnan, from Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰēh₁- ‘to go, leave’. Cognates in the Germanic languages
include West Frisian
gean, Dutch
gaan, Low German
gahn, German
gehen, Danish
, Norwegian
, Swedish
gå, Crimean Gothic
geen.
of go; instead, the word ēode (variant ġeēode) was used, which lingered on as the now obsolete yede, yode and yead.
Old English ēode ‘he went’ (plural ēodon) is made up of a defective
preterite base ēo- and the weak dental suffix -de common in most modern English past tense forms (cf. ache : ached). The base ēo- and its Gothic
counterpart iddja (pl. iddjedum) show the following development:
Both forms are derived from the PIE root * (late *) based on close matches with past tense forms of Sanskrit
yā́ti ‘he goes, travels’ (cf. imperfect áyāt, perfect yayáu, and aorist áyāsam). The root is regarded as an iterative-intensive derivative of the more common *- ‘go’ (present *). One reflex of *- is Latin
īre ‘to go’ (present eō ‘I go’) which gave many English words such as ambition, exit, introit, issue, preterite, and so forth.
, wende (wend) had become synonymous with go, but its infinitive and present tense forms had ceased to be in frequent use. This was also true of the various ēode-derived preterites of go, thus a variant preterite of wend absorbed the function. After went became established as the preterite of go, wend took on a new preterite, wended. In Scotland
and northern England, yede was gaed, regularly formed by suffixing -ed to a variant of go. Due to the influence of the region, southern English forms constitute the standard language of England, and so went is the standard English preterite. Spencer
used yede to mean go with yode as its preterite form but as dialect.
Proto-Germanic *wanđijanan is a causative
derivative of *wenđanan ‘to wind, wrap’, from which the modern English verb wind developed. Cognates include West Frisian wine, Dutch, Low German, German winden, Swedish vinda, Danish and Norwegian vinde, and Gothic -windan (in biwindan ‘to wind around, wrap’). PGmc *wenđanan comes from Proto-Indo-European *- ‘to wind, twist’, which also gave Umbrian
preuenda ‘turn!’ (imperative), Tocharian
A/B wänt/wänträ ‘covers, envelops’, Greek
(Hesychius
) áthras ‘wagon’, Armenian
gind ‘ring’, and Sanskrit
vandhúra ‘carriage framework’.
roots: *ǵʰēh₁, the source of go and gone (← ME gon, ygon ← OE ġegān); *h₁ei, the source of ēode; and *u̯endʰ, the source of went as well as wend and wind. Only two roots are continually used in their modern English reflexes go/gone and went.
to go, e.g. Dutch gaan, Low German gahn, German gehen, and Danish/Norwegian/Swedish gå, also have suppletive past forms, namely the preterite ging of Dutch and German, güng of Low Geman, gick (from the same source) of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and the past participle gegangen of German. These forms are relics from earlier, more widespread words that meant 'to walk, go' and which survive sporadically in Scots
gang, East Frisian
gunge, and Icelandic
ganga. Some obsolete cognates include Middle Low German
, Middle High German
gangen, early modern Swedish gånga, and Gothic gaggan. These are reflexes of Proto-Germanic *ganganan, from Proto-Indo-European *- ‘to step’, which also gave Lithuanian
žeñgti ‘to stride’, Greek kochōnē ‘perineum’, Avestan zanga ‘ankle’, and Sanskrit jáṁhas ‘step’, jaṅghā ‘shank’.
Therefore, the case of English go is not unique among the Germanic languages, and it would appear that most have in a like manner reproduced equivalent suppletive conjugations for their words for ‘to go’, suggesting a cyclical change patterned after the state of affairs in Proto-Germanic.
s such as "go around" and "go off".
Indo-European copula
A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be. Though in some languages, such as Russian, it is vestigial, it is present nonetheless in atrophied forms or derivatives.-General features:...
and go are the only English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
verbs with a suppletive
Suppletion
In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...
past tense.
Principal parts
The principal partsPrincipal parts
In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms.- English :...
of go are go, went, gone. In other respects, the modern English verb conjugates regularly. The irregularity of the principal parts is due to their disparate origin in definitely two and possibly three distinct Indo-European roots.
Unlike every other English verb except be, the preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
(simple past tense) of go is not etymologically
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
related to its infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
. Instead, the preterite of go, went, descends from a variant of the preterite of wend, the descendant of Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
wendan and Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
wenden. Old English wendan (modern wend) and gān (mod. go) shared semantic similarities. The similarities are evident in the sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
"I'm wending my way home", which is equivalent to "I'm going home".
Etymology
Go descends from Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
gon, goon, from Old English gān, from Proto-Germanic *gēnan, from Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
*ǵʰēh₁- ‘to go, leave’. Cognates in the Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
include West Frisian
West Frisian
The West Frisian can mean:* West Frisian language, the language spoken in the Friesland province of the Netherlands* West Frisian dialect, the Hollandic Dutch dialect spoken in the North Holland province of the Netherlands* West Frisians, people...
gean, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
gaan, Low German
Low German
Low German or Low Saxon is an Ingvaeonic West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands...
gahn, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
gehen, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
gå, Crimean Gothic
Crimean Gothic
Crimean Gothic was a Gothic dialect spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century....
geen.
Origin of ēode
Old English did not use any variation of went for the general preteritePreterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
of go; instead, the word ēode (variant ġeēode) was used, which lingered on as the now obsolete yede, yode and yead.
Old English ēode ‘he went’ (plural ēodon) is made up of a defective
Defective verb
In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb which is missing e.g. a past tense, or cannot be used in some other way that normal verbs come. Formally, it is a verb with an incomplete conjugation. Defective verbs cannot be conjugated in certain tenses, aspects, or moods.-Arabic:In Arabic, defective...
preterite base ēo- and the weak dental suffix -de common in most modern English past tense forms (cf. ache : ached). The base ēo- and its Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
counterpart iddja (pl. iddjedum) show the following development:
- Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
perfect * (3rd person singular) → *ijō → *ejō (a-mutationGermanic umlautIn linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
) → *eō → ēo- + -de/don; - PIEProto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
perfect * (3rd pers. plural) → *jejj- (Holtzmann's lawHoltzmann's LawHoltzmann's law is a Proto-Germanic sound law originally noted by Adolf Holtzmann in 1838.The law involves the gemination, or doubling, of PIE semivowels and in strong prosodic positions into Proto-Germanic and , which had two outcomes:* hardening into occlusive onsets:** / in North Germanic;**...
) → *jijj- (i-mutationI-mutationI-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
) → *ijj- → iddj- + -a/edum.
Both forms are derived from the PIE root * (late *) based on close matches with past tense forms of Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
yā́ti ‘he goes, travels’ (cf. imperfect áyāt, perfect yayáu, and aorist áyāsam). The root is regarded as an iterative-intensive derivative of the more common *- ‘go’ (present *). One reflex of *- is Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
īre ‘to go’ (present eō ‘I go’) which gave many English words such as ambition, exit, introit, issue, preterite, and so forth.
Development of a new preterite
In Middle English, ēode evolved into ȝede, yede, and yode. By the 15th century in southern EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, wende (wend) had become synonymous with go, but its infinitive and present tense forms had ceased to be in frequent use. This was also true of the various ēode-derived preterites of go, thus a variant preterite of wend absorbed the function. After went became established as the preterite of go, wend took on a new preterite, wended. In Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and northern England, yede was gaed, regularly formed by suffixing -ed to a variant of go. Due to the influence of the region, southern English forms constitute the standard language of England, and so went is the standard English preterite. Spencer
Earl Spencer
Earl Spencer is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain that was created on 1 November 1765, along with the title Viscount Althorp, of Althorp in the County of Northamptonshire, for John Spencer, 1st Viscount Spencer, a great-grandson of the 1st Duke of Marlborough...
used yede to mean go with yode as its preterite form but as dialect.
Origin of went
Went, the modern past tense of go, was originally the strong past tense form of Middle English wenden ‘to turn, direct; depart’ (modern English wend), from Old English wendan (past wende, ġewend), itself from Proto-Germanic *wanđijanan ‘to turn’ (transitive). Cognates include West Frisian weine, Dutch, Low German, German wenden, Swedish vända, Danish, Norwegian vende, and Gothic wandjan. The original forms of the ME past tense were wende, wended (our modern form), and past participle wend, but variant wente developed from about 1200. By ca. 1500, wended had prevailed in the transitive senses, whereas wente, restricted to intransitive senses, rivalled and replaced go’s older past tense, yede/yode.Proto-Germanic *wanđijanan is a causative
Causative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
derivative of *wenđanan ‘to wind, wrap’, from which the modern English verb wind developed. Cognates include West Frisian wine, Dutch, Low German, German winden, Swedish vinda, Danish and Norwegian vinde, and Gothic -windan (in biwindan ‘to wind around, wrap’). PGmc *wenđanan comes from Proto-Indo-European *- ‘to wind, twist’, which also gave Umbrian
Umbrian language
Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages...
preuenda ‘turn!’ (imperative), Tocharian
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
A/B wänt/wänträ ‘covers, envelops’, Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
(Hesychius
Hesychius
Hesychius , may refer to:*Hesychius of Alexandria, lexicographer*St. Hesychius of Cazorla, saint, martyr, and bishop*Hesychius of Jerusalem, presbyter and exegete*Hesychius of Sinai, hieromonk and Byzantine author*Hesychius of Antioch...
) áthras ‘wagon’, Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
gind ‘ring’, and Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
vandhúra ‘carriage framework’.
Summary of the main Proto-Indo-European roots
Go is historically derived from at least three Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
roots: *ǵʰēh₁, the source of go and gone (← ME gon, ygon ← OE ġegān); *h₁ei, the source of ēode; and *u̯endʰ, the source of went as well as wend and wind. Only two roots are continually used in their modern English reflexes go/gone and went.
Suppletion in other Germanic languages
The Dutch, Low German, German, and Scandinavian verbs cognateCognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
to go, e.g. Dutch gaan, Low German gahn, German gehen, and Danish/Norwegian/Swedish gå, also have suppletive past forms, namely the preterite ging of Dutch and German, güng of Low Geman, gick (from the same source) of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and the past participle gegangen of German. These forms are relics from earlier, more widespread words that meant 'to walk, go' and which survive sporadically in Scots
Scots
Scots may refer to:*The Scottish people, the inhabitants of Scotland*Scots language *Scotch-Irish*Scottish English*Scots pine, a Scottish tree*Short for Pound Scots...
gang, East Frisian
East Frisian
East Frisian is an adjective referring to East Frisia, a region in Germany. It can refer specifically to:*East Frisians, the people from the region*East Friesian , a breed of sheep originating there...
gunge, and Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
ganga. Some obsolete cognates include Middle Low German
Middle Low German
Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
, Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
gangen, early modern Swedish gånga, and Gothic gaggan. These are reflexes of Proto-Germanic *ganganan, from Proto-Indo-European *- ‘to step’, which also gave Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
žeñgti ‘to stride’, Greek kochōnē ‘perineum’, Avestan zanga ‘ankle’, and Sanskrit jáṁhas ‘step’, jaṅghā ‘shank’.
Therefore, the case of English go is not unique among the Germanic languages, and it would appear that most have in a like manner reproduced equivalent suppletive conjugations for their words for ‘to go’, suggesting a cyclical change patterned after the state of affairs in Proto-Germanic.
Phrasal forms
The verb may be combined with various prepositions to form phrasal verbPhrasal verb
A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal...
s such as "go around" and "go off".