gone

See also: góneʼ

English

Pronunciation

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

  • Audio (US); [ɡ̊ɑ̃ːn]:

    (file)

  • Rhymes: -ɑːn

Etymology 1

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”), and Dutch gegaan (“gone”).

Verb

gone

1. past participle of go

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 is gone.

4. Broken, failed.

   The bulb is gone. Can you put a new one in?

   The car isn't driveable — the steering is gone.

5. Dead.
   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Marriage”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, 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.

6. Doomed, done for.

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

7. (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 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 28:

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

8. (slang) Infatuated; in love (+ on, for, in).
   • 1902, Henry James, The Wings of the Dove:

     I am, of course, ‘gone’ for you.

   • 1915, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 35, in Of Human Bondage, Vintage, published 2000:

     But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evidently frightfully gone on him.

9. (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, 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.

10. (archaic) Ago (used post-positionally).
    • 1999, George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings, Bantam, published 2011, page 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.

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

    She’s three months gone

Translations

away, having left

Albanian : ikur (sq) Catalan: anat (ca) Dutch: weg (nl) Estonian: please add this translation if you can Esperanto: irinta, foririnta Finnish: poissa (fi) French: parti (fr) m German: weg (de) Greek: Ancient: φροῦδος (phroûdos), οἰχόμενος (oikhómenos) Hungarian: eltűnt (hu) Irish: ar shiúl Italian: andarsene (it) (literally “to depart”) (use present perfect or past historic for "to be gone") Latin: abiisse (la) (literally “to have gone, to have departed”) Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can Portuguese: ir-se (pt) (literally “to go away”) (use preterite or present perfect for "to be gone") Russian: please add this translation if you can Sanskrit: गत (sa) (gata) Spanish: ido (es) Swedish: borta (sv)

no longer existing

Esperanto: for (adv.)

used up

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

Preposition

gone

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

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

Derived terms

• arse has gone clean out of 'er
• arse has gone out of 'er
• arse has gone right out of 'er
• arse is gone right out of 'er
• be gone
• boldly go where no man has gone before
• bygone
• da arse is gone right out of 'er
• day gone by
• dead and gone
• downgone
• far gone
• get you gone
• gone aloft
• gone bad
• gone by lunchtime
• gone case
• gone coon
• gone fishing
• gone goose
• gone north about
• goner
• goneski
• gonesome
• Gonesville
• gone with the wind
• gone wrong
• gone-zo
• just gone
• real gone
• to hell and gone
• too far gone
• ungone
• waygone
• yesterday is gone
• yesterday's gone
• you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
• you never know what you've got till it's gone

Etymology 2

Contraction

gone

1. Alternative spelling of gon / gon': clipping of gonna or going to.
   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 24:

     Take or be taken. Get yours or get got. It was the code of the streets and I'd lived by it. The way things was looking, I was prolly gone die by it too.

References

• “gone”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

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

Fijian

Noun

gone

1. child

French

Alternative forms

• gône

Etymology

Apparently from Franco-Provençal gonet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡon/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (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.

Middle English

Etymology 1

Noun

gone

1. alternative form of gome (“man”)

Etymology 2

Verb

gone

1. alternative form of gon (“gone”)

Yola

Verb

gone

1. alternative form of goan
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Gone to glaade.

     After it is set.

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 42