Other forms: wends, wending, wended
To wend is to make your way slowly along. Wend your way home, wending through the crowd, wend towards the river.
It survives almost only in wend your way, and it always takes a way as its object. Its own past tense was lost: went, the past of go, was originally the past of this verb and was borrowed across. The Old English meant to turn.
1verbwendTo make your way slowly along.
“Every summer, pilgrims wend their way slowly up the mountain path.”
wend is a way of going.
Old English wendan means to turn. Its old past tense, went, was taken over by the verb go.
Proto-Indo-European
*wendʰ- — to turn, wind, braid
Proto-Germanic
*wandijaną — to turn
Proto-West Germanic
*wandijan
Old English
wendan — to turn, change, translate
Middle English
wenden
English, today
wend
Built from
From Middle English wenden, from Old English wendan (“to turn, change, translate”), from Proto-West Germanic wandijan, from Proto-Germanic wandijaną (“to turn”), causative of windaną (“to wind”), from Proto-Indo-European wendʰ- (“to turn, wind, braid”). Cognate with Dutch wenden (“to turn”), German wenden (“to turn, reverse”), Danish vende (“to turn”), Norwegian Bokmål vende (“to turn”), Norwegian Nynorsk venda (“to turn”), Swedish vända (“to turn, turn over, veer, direct”), Icelandic venda (“to wend, turn, change”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (“to cause to turn”). Related to wind (Etymology 2).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA