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Glite Dictionary
🚶 To travel to job ⚙️ To start operating
to go to work

to go to work

455 1.0
To travel from home to your job
  • phrasal verb
  • /ɡoʊ tə wɜrk/
translation icon : ir al trabajo
  • I have to go to work too.
  • go to work every day
  • leave home to go to work
  • go to work ill

I don't want to go to work, call in.

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Examples

  • Every day I would go to work early.

  • My wife then got up and went to work to care for her patients.

    I've Had It

  • And so I went to work for them.

    Shawn Ryan Show

  • The plan today is to go to work with my mom.

  • So I went to work after school.

  • Time to go to work.

    Lock Up (1989)

  • All of us, every day, go to work where we try to do something better.

    Academic text (1995)

  • The next day, when he went to work, he walked to the management area of the plant.

    Academic text (2002)

  • Upon graduation, Kevin went to work for a Big 4 CPA firm.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Every morning, I wake up at 7 AM and go to work by bus.

Synonyms

to travel
vsto go to work
∞ 1.0

To go from one place to another, often for work or pleasure

refers to starting a routine commute to one's place of employment
to travel to
vsto go to work
263 1.0

To go to another place for work or pleasure

begins the daily commute to one's place of employment

Antonyms

to stay home
336 1.0

Be at home and not go out

to take the day off
31 2.0

Stay away from work for a day to rest or do personal things

Surface Forms

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

Morphology

go + to + work

The meaning is directly built from 'go' (begin to run/be in action) plus 'work' (to function/operate), so 'go to work' naturally yields 'begin operating' and is derivable by combining the constituents. This straightforward compositional pattern (go + to + work = start working/operate) is cross-linguistically common and should be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the component words.

Etymology

Go to work paints a simple picture: you go (move) to the place where you work, like getting on a bus to your job. So it means 'to leave home and start the trip to your job'.