Woenda in the Lindisfarne Gospels

In Old English, the preterite of gan was lost and supplied with eode from a lost form equivalent to Gothic iddja, the past tense of gaggan ‘to go.’ After the Old English period, eode became ȝede, yede, yode, etc., and these forms died out and were superseded by went, the past tense of wend (< OE wendan ‘to turn’). The purpose of this paper is to show that woenda (Northumbrian form of wendan) means not only ‘turning’ but also ‘going,’ the fact of which contributes to the development of go – went paradigm.