Ago

//əˈɡəʊ// adj, name, postp

adj, name, postp ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Gone; gone by; gone away; passed; passed away. archaic, dialectal, not-comparable

    "in days ago / in days agone"

  2. 2
    Nearly gone; dead. (used in Devonshire at the turn of the 19th century) archaic, dialectal, not-comparable

    "Woe the day—she is agone!"

Adjective
  1. 1
    gone by; or in the past wordnet
Adverb
  1. 1
    in the past wordnet
Postp
  1. 1
    Before now, before the present time

    "I got married ten years ago."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Initialism of Attorney General's Office. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism

Example

More examples

"If I wanted to scare you, I would tell you what I dreamt about a few weeks ago."

Etymology

From Middle English ago, agon (“passed”), past participle of agon (“to depart, escape, pass”), from Old English āgān (“to go away, pass away, go forth, come to pass”), from Proto-Germanic *uz- (“out”), *gāną (“to go”), equivalent to a- + gone, and by surface analysis, a- + go. Cognate with German ergehen (“to come to pass, fare, go forth”). Compare also Old Saxon āgangan (“to go or pass by”), Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌲𐌰𐌲𐌲𐌰𐌽 (usgaggan, “to go forth”).

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.