# went vs were

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### went
*verb · IPA /wɛnt/ · frequency rank #300*
simple past of go

### were
*verb · IPA /wə(ɹ)/ · frequency rank #52*
second-person singular simple past indicative of be

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/went-vs-were