Gengan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An Old English verb meaning to go, walk, or make one's way from one place to another
2. A archaic Old English verb expressing the act of going or proceeding on foot toward a destination
3. Old English term for traveling or moving forward by walking, the ancestor of the modern word go

Etymology: In Old English, "gengan" (also spelled "gangan") was the everyday word for walking or going, and its descendant is the modern verb "go." Its past tense, "eode," was lost, and English borrowed "went" from an unrelated verb, "wend," meaning to turn or make one's way. That is why "go" and "went" look like different verbs: they came from two different words. The verb's own root is the sense of stepping. Its relatives survive across the Germanic languages, such as German "gehen" and Dutch "gaan," and the "gang-" element lives on in English compounds like "gangway" and "gangplank," where it still means a passage for going.