For some reason I wondered about the origins of "go" and when I looked it up found a discussion of why the past tense of "go" is "went" rather than "goed". It is rather strange.
In Old English "go" was gan, the ancestor of the modern word, and it already had an irregular plural eode, a word of unknown origin.
At that time "went" was the past of wendan, connected with modern wind (as in turn). "Wend" has survived into Modern English as "wend", as in wend ones way. Nowadays the word has narrowed its meaning to imply travelling in a circuitous and roundabout way and has a rather archaic ring, but originally seems to have meant wind in the general sense.
"Wend" had a past tense "went" (like spend -> spent; send -> sent; lend -> lent; rend (meaning rip) -> rent and probably others) and for some reason is Early Middle English this started to be used in place of eode, which was eventually replaced, and disappeared from the language.
But why was "goed" not adopted? One possibility could be to avoid confusion with "good" which would at that point have had a vowel sound like that in "oak" and a 'g' like that in "go". Just a theory, I don't really have a grasp on these sound changes.
Where Did "Goed" Go?
For some reason I wondered about the origins of "go" and when I looked it up found a discussion of why the past tense of "go" is "went" rather than "goed". It is rather strange.
In Old English "go" was gan, the ancestor of the modern word, and it already had an irregular plural eode, a word of unknown origin.
At that time "went" was the past of wendan, connected with modern wind (as in turn). "Wend" has survived into Modern English as "wend", as in wend ones way. Nowadays the word has narrowed its meaning to imply travelling in a circuitous and roundabout way and has a rather archaic ring, but originally seems to have meant wind in the general sense.
"Wend" had a past tense "went" (like spend -> spent; send -> sent; lend -> lent; rend (meaning rip) -> rent and probably others) and for some reason is Early Middle English this started to be used in place of eode, which was eventually replaced, and disappeared from the language.
But why was "goed" not adopted? One possibility could be to avoid confusion with "good" which would at that point have had a vowel sound like that in "oak" and a 'g' like that in "go". Just a theory, I don't really have a grasp on these sound changes.