gone

gone

See also: góneʼ

English

Etymology

From Middle English gon, igon, gan, ȝegan, from Old English gān, ġegān, from Proto-Germanic *gānaz (“gone”), past participle of *gāną (“to go”). Cognate with West Germanic Scots gane (“gone”), West Frisian gien (“gone”), Low German gahn (“gone”), Dutch gegaan (“gone”) and German gegangen (“gone”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: gŏn, IPA^(key): /ɡɒn/
  • Rhymes: -ɒn
• (General American, General Australian, archaic RP) enPR: gôn, IPA^(key): /ɡɔːn/
  • Rhymes: -ɔːn
• (cot–caught merger, traditional New York City) enPR: gŏn, IPA^(key): /ɡɑn/

  • Audio (US) IPA(key): [ɡɑn]

    (file)

  • Rhymes: -ɑːn

Verb

gone

1. past participle of go
2. Alternative spelling of gon or gon': short for gonna, going to.

Adjective

gone (comparative further gone or goner, superlative furthest gone or gonest)

1. Away, having left.

   Are they gone already?

2. No longer existing, having passed.

   The days of my youth are gone.

   All the little shops that used to be here are now gone.

3. Used up.

   I'm afraid all the coffee's gone at the moment.

   The bulb's gone, can you put a new one in?.

4. Dead.
   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], OCLC 21345056, page 221:

     Dust, that a breath could blow aside, yet that was once, like ourselves, animate with hope, passion, and sorrow, is below; around are the vain memorials of human grief and human pride; yet all alike dedicated to the gone.

5. Doomed, done for.

   Have you seen the company's revenue? It's through the floor. They're gone.

6. (colloquial) Not fully aware of one's surroundings, often through intoxication or mental decline.

   Don't bother trying to understand what Grandma says; she's gone.

   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, London: Heinemann, OCLC 59891543, page 28:

     […] she put on a kind of sing-song voice whenever she was pissed, it was one of the signs that she was really gone […]

7. (slang) Entirely given up to; infatuated with; used with on.

   He's totally gone on her.

8. (informal, US, dated) Excellent, wonderful; crazy.

   It was a group of real gone cats.

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 11, in On the Road, Penguin, published 1976, OCLC 43419454, part 1, page 61:

     “All right, all right, don’t drop your gold all over the place. I have found the gonest little girl in the world and I am going straight to the Lion’s Den with her tonight.”

   • 1975, Garry Marshall et al., “Richie's Flip Side”, in Happy Days, season 2, episode 21, spoken by Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard):

     Dad, I want to be a jock. All a jock needs is some hep patter and a real gone image. Now, they just don't teach that jazz in college.

9. (archaic) Ago (used post-positionally).
   • 1999, George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings, Bantam 2011, p. 491:

     Six nights gone, your brother fell upon my uncle Stafford, encamped with his host at a village called Oxcross not three days ride from Casterly Rock.

10. (US) Weak; faint; feeling a sense of goneness.
11. Of an arrow: wide of the mark.
12. Used with a genitively constructed duration to indicate for how long a process has been developing, an action has been performed or a state has persisted; pregnant.

    She’s three months' gone

Translations

away, having left

Dutch: weg (nl) Estonian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: poissa (fi) French: parti (fr) m German: weg (de) Greek: Ancient: φροῦδος (phroûdos), οἰχόμενος (oikhómenos) Hungarian: eltűnt (hu) Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can Russian: please add this translation if you can Sanskrit: गत (sa) (gata) Spanish: ido (es) Swedish: borta (sv)

used up

Chickasaw: taha Dutch: op (nl) German: alle (de)

Preposition

gone

1. (Britain, informal) Past, after, later than (a time).

   You'd better hurry up, it's gone four o'clock.

Derived terms

• far gone
• Gonesville
• goner
• yesterday is gone

References

• gone at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• ENGO, Geno, Goen, NGEO, Onge, geno, geno-, geon, oneg

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Fijian

Noun

gone

1. child

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French

Alternative forms

• gône

Etymology

Apparently from Franco-Provençal gonet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡon/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

gone m (plural gones)

1. (Lyon dialect) kid (child)

   Synonyms: enfant, gosse

Further reading

• “gone”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

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Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English guma.

Noun

gone

1. Alternative form of gome (“man”)

Etymology 2

From Old English gān, ġegān.

Verb

gone

1. Alternative form of gon (“gone”)

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Plautdietsch

Verb

gone (3rd person present jeit, past jinkj, past participle jegone)

1. to walk
2. to go, to move
3. to proceed
4. (baking, of dough) to rise