Idiom
how goes it
Meaning
An informal greeting roughly equivalent to how are you.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Hey, how goes it today?”
“How goes it with your new project at work?”
“I ran into an old friend at the grocery store and asked him how goes it.”
“When you walk into the office on Monday morning, it is common for your coworkers to smile and ask how goes it.”
“After months of silence, he sent a brief message asking how goes it with my new life abroad.”
Examples
simple
“Hey, how goes it today?”
“How goes it with your new project at work?”
contextual
“I ran into an old friend at the grocery store and asked him how goes it.”
“When you walk into the office on Monday morning, it is common for your coworkers to smile and ask how goes it.”
complex
“After months of silence, he sent a brief message asking how goes it with my new life abroad.”
Origin
The phrase appears as a regular Early Modern English equivalent of "how’s it going," originating at a time when neither progressive tenses nor do-support were obligatory in the language. While the construction could have survived into the present through regional dialects, modern usage is considered likely to be a calque of the German *wie geht es*.
The expression may additionally draw from the Dutch *hoe gaat het* or the Danish *hvordan går det*. Though the specific path of its re-entry into standard English remains unproven, it mirrors a variety of Germanic forms that treat one's well-being as a matter of how things are currently proceeding.
Key words
Related idioms
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