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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gaan.

to go, to move from one place to another

4 characters1 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

verb[xaːn]Netherlands[ɣaːn]Belgium
  1. to go, to move from one place to another

    intransitive
    Ik ga naar het strand.
    Die auto gaat nergens naartoe.
  2. to leave or depart, to move away

    intransitive
    Morgen gaan ze weer.
  3. to lead (in a direction)

    intransitive
    Deze weg gaat helemaal naar Limburg.
  4. to proceed (well or poorly)

    intransitive
    Dat ging goed.
    Hoe gaat het?
  5. Forms the future tense of a verb, similarly to English going to future tense

    auxiliary
    Het gaat toch niet werken.
  6. to start to, begin to, to be going to

    auxiliary
    De zon gaat weer schijnen.
    Ik ga slapen.
  7. to be about

    transitive
    Dit verhaal gaat over een klein jongetje.
  8. to be the point of, to be about

    transitive
    Daar gaat het niet om!
  9. to be in charge of

    transitive
    Jan gaat over boekhouding, ik niet.
  10. to experience, to take, to feel some way about something

    copulative · informal
    Ik ga heel slecht op dit soort onzin.
    Hij gaat altijd wel goed op dit album.
Where this word comes from

From Middle Dutch gâen, from Old Dutch gān, from a fusion of Proto-West Germanic *gān and *gangan, from Proto-Germanic *gāną and *ganganą, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁-, *ǵʰengʰ-.

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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.