Principal Parts
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".
Read more about this topic: Go (verb)
Famous quotes containing the words principal and/or parts:
“As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of “Uncle Sam” the full amount of both Principal and Interest.”
—Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)
“still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)