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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

go in for en · VERB

Meanings

  1. To enter a competition.
  2. (colloquial) To have an interest in or approve of something.
    • "I hope she doesn't go in for big purple orchids," Miss Tinkham said to Mrs. Rasmussen, "there are so many pretty kinds." 2016, Mary Lasswell, Let's Go For Broke:
  3. (colloquial) To engage oneself or take part in something.
    • Jem, there's a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don't go in for statistics. 1854, Charles Dickens, “Mr. James Harthouse”, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, 2nd book (Reaping), page 148:
    • It ain't their fault; I know heaps of nice girls who feel it horribly. What can they do? they can't go in for cricket and football. 1876, Margaret Oliphant, Phoebe Junior, page 270:
    • "Why on earth do you go in for track?" I asked him. And then he explained that he thought that, if you wanted to be an all-around man, you ought to cultivate some form of athletics— he's actually taken up pole-vaulting: isn't that a ghastly thought? 1979, Edmund Wilson, American Earthquake, page 140:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
went in for Tense=Past lexicographic
goes in for Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic
gone in for Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
going in for Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic