go [OE] Words do not get much shorter, more common, or more important than go. The irregular past tense went is because two Old English verbs gan and wenden have fallen together. Go largely replaced wend, now mainly surviving in to wend your way, but picked up wend’s past tense. Go-cart was first recorded in the late 17th century when it meant a baby walker: the first element is from the obsolete sense ‘walk’. The variant go-kart for a small racing car arose in the 1950s with kart as a deliberate alteration of cart. What goes around comes around is a modern proverb first used in the USA in the 1960s, although the idea was expressed in different ways much earlier. Also from the USA is when the going gets tough, the tough get going [1950s], a favourite family saying of President John F. Kennedy’s father Joseph, although it is unlikely he actually coined it. Go ahead, make my day is particularly associated with Clint Eastwood’s character Harry Callaghan in Sudden Impact (1983), as he aimed his .44 Magnum gun at a gunman, daring him to shoot. See also pear-shaped.