gehen.
to go, to walk
Meaning & usage
to go, to walk
Lass uns beide mit dem Hund gehen.
Ich sah die Kinder über die Straße gehen.
to leave
Ich gehe jetzt.
to leave, to take off (aeroplane, train)
Wann geht dein Zug?
to be going; to be all right [with dative ‘for someone’ and predicate adjective ‘in a particular way’] (idiomatically translated by English be doing or similar, with the dative object as the subject)
Wie geht es dir?
Es geht mir gut.
to be possible
Das würde vielleicht gehen.
Ich zeige dir, wie es geht.
to work, to function (of a machine, method or the like)
Der Kaffeeautomat geht nicht.
to last, to go for, to go on, to be in progress
Das ging für eine halbe Stunde oder so.
Die Sitzung geht bis ein Uhr.
to sit, to rise, to expand (of dough etc.)
Teig drei Stunden gehen lassen.
to be (on); to be paid for (by)
Die Getränke gehen auf mich.
to be approaching
Es geht auf 8 Uhr.
to go one's way, to make one's way (of a path, destination), to go separate ways
to be hard (on), to be (specifically) exhausting (for)
Der lange Abstieg ins Tal geht echt auf die Knie.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁-der. Proto-Germanic *gāną Proto-West Germanic *gān Old High German gān Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *ganganą Proto-West Germanic *gangan Old High German gangan Middle High German gān German gehen From Middle High German gān, gēn, from Old High German gān, gēn, from Proto-West Germanic *gān, from Proto-Germanic *gāną, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”). Cognate with Dutch gaan, Low German gaan, gahn, English go, Swedish and Danish gå, Yiddish גיין (geyn). The form gēn instead of gān is of Bavarian origin, but many dialects of Central and Low German have -e- (from earlier -ei-) or ei in the 2nd and 3rd person singular present, in keeping with the Proto-Germanic irregular conjugation. The -h- was introduced into the spelling by analogy with sehen, in which it had become mute but was retained in spelling. Forms such as gingen, gegangen etc. derive from Old High German gangan, from Proto-West Germanic *gangan, from Proto-Germanic *ganganą, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (“to walk”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.