Word.ws English Dictionary

bowk

/boʊk/

bowk verb: to belch, to burp.

Verb

bowk (third-person singular simple present bowks, present participle bowking or bowkin, simple past and past participle bowked)

  1. (Geordie) To belch, to burp.
    • "That made me bowk," he said; and he bowked again. He took another swig with caution, and gave the bottle to David, and they swigged at it in turn.1966, William Mayne, Earthfasts, Peter Smith, published 1989, →ISBN, page 37
    • If this man did not feed the mill carefully and regularly it bowked with "indigestion" and this slowed everything up.1997, Brian P. Martin, Tales of the Old Countrywomen, David & Charles, →ISBN, page 143
  2. (UK) To vomit.
    • At that point another of my guests, a highly respected Newcastle art gallery owner by the name of Rashida, bowked up all over the floor behind me.2004, Chris Donald, Rude Kids: The Unfeasible Story of Viz, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 275
    • 'Take yourself to bed then. And don't whine to me tomorrow about how you bowked your guts out all night.'2009, Blythe Gifford, In the Master's Bed, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 64

Examples of bowk in a sentence

  • He claimed that meat or cheese made you 'bowk' (belch) and get stomach cramps — the last thing you need 'yakking' (using a pick) coal for eight tough hours in a two-foot 'cavil' (job area).2008, Sid Waddell, Taak of the Toon: How to Speak Geordie, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 92:
  • Misima bowked beside him, bent over double.2011, Erica Bell, The Voyage of the Shuckenoor, Interactive Publications, →ISBN:

Forms of bowk

third-person singular presentbowks
present participlebowking
present participlebowkin
past participlebowked
pastbowked
alternative formbolk

Origin of bowk

From Middle English bolken, bulken, alteration of earlier balken, from Old English bealcan (“to belch; utter”). Compare Dutch bulken (“to roar”), German bölken. More at bolk.

Words that rhyme with bowk

Questions about bowk

What does bowk mean?
Bowk means to belch, to burp.
How do you use bowk in a sentence?
He claimed that meat or cheese made you 'bowk' (belch) and get stomach cramps — the last thing you need 'yakking' (using a pick) coal for eight tough hours in a two-foot 'cavil' (job area).
What part of speech is bowk?
Bowk is a verb.
How do you pronounce bowk?
Bowk is pronounced /boʊk/.
What is the past tense of bowk?
The past tense of bowk is bowked.

Words near bowk in the dictionary

  1. bowings
  2. bowings and scrapings
  3. bowjies
  4. bowjowler
  5. bowjy
  6. bowk
  7. bowked
  8. Bowker
  9. Bowkers
  10. Bowkett
  11. bowkin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bowk.wav.

Cite this entry: “bowk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.