go back

phrasal verb

went back; gone back; going back; goes back

1

: to return to a place

I forgot my purse and had to go back for it.

After college she went back home.

Go back inside! You'll catch cold.

2

: to return to doing something

I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.

He waved hello, then went right back to work.

She went back to eating her dinner.

3

: to have existed for a particular amount of time or since a particular period

These ruins go back hundreds of years.

4

: to have known each other for an amount of time

We go back 30 years.

He and I go back a long way.

5

: to think or talk about something from the past

To fully understand the issues, we have to go back a few years.

Examples of go back in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Artists who journeyed to the West in the 1850s and '60s would go back to New York and paint their perceptions of the West, or what audiences thought was the West. —April Wallace, arkansasonline.com, 12 Sep. 2024

Esposito’s history with the project goes back around 25 years, to a time when the director invited the actor to participate in table reads of an early iteration of the script. —Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 12 Sep. 2024

When one indicator points to optimism and the other is neutral, the S & P 500 has averaged an annual gain of just 1.1% going back to 1995, NDR data shows. —Fred Imbert, CNBC, 11 Sep. 2024

Harris said Trump has a long history of racial division, going back to when his family’s company was investigated for refusing to rent to black people decades ago. —Josh Boak, Chicago Tribune, 11 Sep. 2024