wend

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English wenden,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English wendan (“to turn; to change; to go”),^[5][6][7][8] from Proto-West Germanic *wandijan, from Proto-Germanic *wandijaną (“to turn”),^[1] a causative of *windaną (“to wind”),^[1][9][8] from another ablaut grade (the o-grade) of the base of wind, to turn.^[10][7] The root is Proto-Indo-European *wendʰ- (“to turn, wind, braid”).^[1][6] Its cognates include Old Frisian wenda, Old Saxon wendian, Old High German wenten, Dutch wenden, German wenden, Old Norse venda, Swedish vända, Danish vende and Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (wandjan, “to turn”).^[10][7][9] Ayto and Barnhart connect the verb with wander, and Ayto with wand too.^[11][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

To turn, also to go: Old English wendan in Beowulf, dated by Barnhart to about 725,^[7] and with a wide range of turning senses in Old English prose from Ælfred and Ælfric on.^[10][5] Barnhart dates the Middle English form wenden to probably before 1200.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The core sense of the Germanic base is "to turn", from which several other Old English uses were early extensions, such as "to change" and "to translate".^[10][6] The move to "go" was probably by way of turning in a certain direction in order to go, and already in Old English the idea of turning could fade or vanish;^[10][11] the OED notes that this development is not typical of the cognate verbs elsewhere in Germanic.^[10] The verb was very common in Middle English, for walking and going of every kind,^[2][6] and in compounds such as awenden, biwenden and miswenden.^[6][2] Its past tense was originally wende or wended, but wente and went spread from about 1200,^[7][6] and after about 1500 went served as the past tense of go, leaving wend with a new past tense, wended.^[7][11][8] As went passed to go, wend nearly lost the plain sense "to move, proceed".^[10] Johnson (1755) called it "now obsolete, but its preterite went, is still in use",^[12] and Webster (1828) kept it for poetry.^[13] It survives mainly in wend one's way, recorded from the early 14th century,^[6][14] where modern use often implies a slow or winding course; the OED takes this as partly a memory of turning and partly a later development.^[10][15] Sailors also used it for turning a ship.^[16][17] In dialect, it meant to turn round in Cumberland and north Lincolnshire, where boatmen had a wending-place for turning vessels on a canal, and to go or walk in Scotland, Northumberland and Yorkshire.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 725 – Old English wendan, to turn, to go, in Beowulf.^[7]
• early Old English – to turn one's mind in some direction; to translate into another language (obsolete by 1225).^[10]
• c. 1200 – the past tense variants wente and went.^[7][6]
• c. 1225 – to turn something over in one's mind.^[10]
• early 14th century – the phrase wend one's way.^[6]
• c. 1500 – went taken as the past tense of go, with wended as the new past tense of wend.^[7][8]
• 1556 – in sailing, to turn a ship to the opposite direction.^[16][17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To go or make one's way, often slowly or by an indirect route, especially in wend one's way: We wended our way through the crowded market.^{[19][15][4][3]}
2. To proceed along or travel through a place.^[4][3]
3. (archaic) To turn a ship's head in tacking.^[3][20]
4. (archaic) To go away, depart.^[20][3]
5. (obsolete, Old English–1538) To turn something round or over; to alter its position or direction.^[10][3][17]
6. (obsolete, Old English–1450) To change the character of something.^[10][3][20]

Related words

• wind
• went
• wand

Usage notes

The capitalised Wend, a member of a Slavic people of eastern Germany, is borrowed separately from German, of doubtful origin.^[10][3][17] The OED also records an obsolete wend, to think or suppose (1581–1650), made from the old past tense of ween.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Webster, Noah (1828), An American Dictionary of the English Language, New York: S. Converse
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
17. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
18. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
19. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ a b c The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers