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Anonymous Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

What do you say instead?

I had a conversation with someone the other day and we started talking about the english language and grammar. That person then said, as an example, "maybe msn went weird." and said that "went weird" is bad english. I never got the chance to ask how you'd say it in a proper way.

So what do you say instead of "went weird"?
"maybe msn had gone weird?"?
What do you say?
  

Top answer

Depending on exactly what you mean by "weird", you could perhaps say "went haywire". If "went weird" is wrong then so is "had gone weird". I don't see how changing the tense helps.

— Mr Wordy

  • Depending on exactly what you mean by "weird", you could perhaps say "went haywire".
  • If "went weird" is wrong then so is "had gone weird".
  • I don't see how changing the tense helps.
  • However, I find "went weird" tolerable in casual English.
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5 Answers
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Depending on exactly what you mean by "weird", you could perhaps say "went haywire".

If "went weird" is wrong then so is "had gone weird". I don't see how changing the tense helps. However, I find "went weird" tolerable in casual English.
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AnonymousSo what do you say instead of "went weird"?
"maybe msn had gone weird?"?
I am not certain if this is true in BrE, but the "had gone + adjective" construction is very common.
i.e. I think he's gone mad.
Anonymous"maybe msn had gone weird?"
It seems fine to me.
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dimsumexpress
I am not certain if this is true in BrE, but the "had gone + adjective" construction is very common.

i.e. I think he's gone mad.

Yes, it's just the same in BrE, but the construction seems more natural with some adjectives than with others. When a less-usual adjective is used, the effect to me is to make the sentence feel m
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Mr WordyYes, it's just the same in BrE, but the construction seems more natural with some adjectives than with others.
Thanks for pointing it out. I agree.
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went weird is fine with me even though it doesn't fit exactly into the expected semantic fields of the pattern to go X (=to become X).

These are essentially agentless and mostly negative:

went mad, went crazy, went out of his/her mind, went insane, went cuckoo, went gaga, went ballistic, went postal, went wild, went awry, went askew, went catawampous, went wonky, w
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