go back

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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.

• (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.

• go back on
• go back to
• go back to where you came from

• come back
• turn back