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

Its inception goes back almost a decade to a conversation between James and the producer, with Channel 4 and HBO jumping aboard several years later. —Max Goldbart, Deadline, 21 Nov. 2024

Making a documentary consists of pushing people from the shadow to the light, and when the film is finished these people go back to their everyday life – to the shadow, in a way. —Leo Barraclough, Variety, 20 Nov. 2024

Our Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman, who's covered the Defense Department for many years, went back over the biographies of defense secretaries and secretaries of war, going back to the beginning of the Republic. —Connor Donevan, NPR, 20 Nov. 2024

Americans went back to dining out, and restaurants scrambled to hire, driving up wages and prices. —Emily Peck, Axios, 19 Nov. 2024