gone
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: gŏn
ipa: /ɡɒn/
rhymes: -ɒn
ipa: /ɡɔːn/
enpr: gôn
ipa: /ɡɔn/
rhymes: -ɔːn
enpr: gŏn
ipa: /ɡɑn/
rhymes: -ɑːn
Forms: form: further gone
form: farther gone
form: goner
form: furthest gone
form: farthest gone
form: gonest
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”), and Dutch gegaan (“gone”).
Senses: examples: text: Are they gone already?
glosses: Away, having left.
examples: text: The days of my youth are gone.
text: All the little shops that used to be here are now gone.
glosses: No longer existing, having passed.
examples: text: I'm afraid all the coffee is gone.
glosses: Used up.
examples: text: The bulb is gone. Can you put a new one in?
text: The car isn't driveable — the steering is gone.
glosses: Broken, failed.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Marriage”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 221:
glosses: Dead.
examples: text: Have you seen the company's revenue? It's through the floor. They're gone.
glosses: Doomed, done for.
examples: text: Don't bother trying to understand what Grandma says; she's gone.
text: [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[…].
ref: 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 28:
glosses: Not fully aware of one's surroundings, often through intoxication or mental decline.
examples: text: I am, of course, ‘gone’ for you.
ref: 1902, Henry James, The Wings of the Dove:
text: But he was pleased and happy and flattered. She was evidently frightfully gone on him.
ref: 1915, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 35, in Of Human Bondage, Vintage, published 2000:
glosses: Infatuated; in love (+ on, for, in).
examples: text: It was a group of real gone cats.
text: “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.”
ref: 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 11, in On the Road, Penguin, published 1976, →OCLC, part 1, page 61:
text: 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.
ref: 1975, Garry Marshall et al., “Richie's Flip Side”, in Happy Days, season 2, episode 21, spoken by Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard):
glosses: Excellent, wonderful; crazy.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1999, George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings, Bantam, published 2011, page 491:
glosses: Ago (used post-positionally).
glosses: Weak; faint; feeling a sense of goneness.
glosses: Of an arrow: wide of the mark.
examples: text: She’s three months gone
glosses: 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.