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Glite Dictionary
📢 To spread 🔄 To turn in circle 🚧 To avoid rules 🫱 To be enough ↩️ To avoid directly
to go around

to go around

85 2.3
Spread among many people, as with a story or rumor
  • phrasal verb
  • /ɡoʊ əˈraʊnd/
translation icon : circular
  • Well, there is a lot of that going around.
  • a rumor going around
  • a story going around
  • going around saying

So there's a saying that goes around adopt, don't shop.

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Examples

  • It is that special time of Crashenfest when we go around the table and everyone says what they love most about Crash.

    Dirty Dishes (2022)

  • Probably the same stories were going around about me.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Now this is one of these guys that goes around just making up claims.

  • And there really are teams of people that go around who are that good, right?

  • After they read the Steps and the Promises, they go around the room and say their names.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • There was a story going around that a jealous lover cut it off during a fight.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • "There's a lot of that going around in my department, too," she said.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • I'm doing all the work, and he's going around telling people he organized everything.

    Blog text (20)

  • Now he is going around telling the patients that you are a miracle healer and that puts the patients in danger.

    John, 316 (2021)

  • He heard a rumor that was going around about the company merging with another firm.

Synonyms

to spread
vsto go around
750 1.6

To become known by many people

focuses on moving among people rather than broad general distribution
to circulate
vsto go around
103 3.9

To spread information or documents among people

is expressed as a phrasal verb rather than a single word
to get around
vsto go around
56 2.8

Information becomes known to many people

describes active movement of information among people rather than passive becoming known
to disseminate
vsto go around
48 6.8

To spread information or ideas widely so many people know them

can mean simple movement among people without explicit purposeful reach
to propagate
vsto go around
23 5.9

Spread ideas, news, or feelings to many people

is more neutral focusing on information moving among people without active promotion
to percolate
vsto go around
8 6.1

Spread slowly through a group until many people know or feel it

describes movement among people that may happen faster or without delay
to pass around
vsto go around
4 2.0

Make information spread among many people

describes movement among people without stressing who causes it
to flash around
vsto go around
  • Texting
4.2

To spread news or pictures quickly among many people on the internet

is neutral about speed and medium focusing on ordinary human movement

Antonyms

to suppress
176 4.8

To stop public protest by force or by people in power

to keep a secret
76 2.6

To not tell anyone private information

How Widespread

famousness
1 3.4
to spread
750 1.6
to go around
85 2.3
mention
220 2.5

Surface Forms

go around infinitive
going around present participle
goes around third person singular
went around past
gone around past participle

Morphology

go + around

The meaning 'to circulate among people' is directly and compositionally derived from 'go' (to move) combined with 'around' (around/about/among), yielding the motion sense of moving through a group. This motion-to-distribution mapping is common cross-linguistically and follows standard English particle-verb patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

Go around comes from a paper, story, or rumor moving from person to person and 'going around' a group. That's why it means 'to circulate among people'.