go back

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See also: goback and go-back

English

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Verb

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go back (third-person singular simple present goes back, present participle going back, simple past went back, past participle gone back)

  1. (intransitive) To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
    We were getting cold so we decided to go back.
    Humans had discovered fire and there was no going back.
    • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC:
      He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. [] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again [] she found her mother standing up before the seat on which she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes, and her father by her side.
    • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:
      Wrex: I escaped with my life. But not before I sank my dagger deep into my father's chest.
      Wrex: That... is why I left. And that's why I'll never go back.

Usage notes

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  • (return): Go back is used chiefly when talking about returning to a place where the speaker is not presently located. Otherwise come back is more common.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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