Go (verb)

The verb go is an irregular verb in the English language (see English irregular verbs). It has a wide range of uses; its basic meaning is "to move from one place to another". Apart from the copular verb be, the verb go is the only English verb to have a suppletive past tense, namely went.

The principal parts 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".

Go descends from Middle English gon, goon, from Old English gān, from Proto-Germanic *gāną, 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.

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