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“Out through the fields and woods / And over the walls I have wended …” So wrote poet Robert Frost in “Reluctance,” using the word’s familiar sense of “to direct one’s course.” By the time of the poem’s publication in 1913, many other senses of wend had wended their way into and out of popular English usage including “to change direction,” “to change someone’s mind,” “to transform into something else,” and “to turn (a ship’s head) in tacking.” All of that turning is linked to the word’s Old English ancestor, wendan, which shares roots with the Old English verb, windan, meaning “to twist” (windan is also the ancestor of the English verb wind as in “the river winds through the valley”). Wend is also to thank for lending the English verb go its past tense form went (as a past tense form of wend, went has long since been superseded by wended).
Examples of wend in a Sentence
Sophia Saifi, CNN Money, 27 Feb. 2026
The judge signed off on an order of protection preventing Santiago and James from going anywhere near both victims as these cases continue to wend their way through the courts.
—Rebecca White, New York Daily News, 27 Feb. 2026
Çatak’s anti-state message acquires an ambiguous power as the movie wends onward, with an enigmatic final shot that finds Aziz tasting clear-skies freedom but still from behind confines of a sort.
—Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 13 Feb. 2026
Legal challenges to constitutional doctrines underpinning the modern American administrative state wend their way through increasingly sympathetic courts, promising sweeping changes to the ways our most important institutions act.
—Walter Russell Mead, The Atlantic, 24 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for wend
Cite this Entry
“Wend.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wend. Accessed 9 Mar. 2026.
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