Word.ws English Dictionary

gape

/ˈɡeɪp/

gape verb: to open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise.

gape: to open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

gape (third-person singular simple present gapes, present participle gaping, simple past and past participle gaped)

  1. (intransitive) To open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise.
    • She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, / And asks if it be time to rise;1723, Jonathan Swift, The Journal of a Modern Lady, 1810, Samuel Johnson, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 11, page 467
    • Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter IX, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  2. (intransitive) To stare in wonder.
    • Home I vvould go, / But that my Dores are hatefull to my eyes. / Fill'd and damm'd up vvith gaping Creditors, / VVatchfull as Fovvlers vvhen their Game vvill ſpring; […]1682, Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, or, A Plot Discover’d. A Tragedy. […], London: […] Jos[eph] Hindmarsh […], →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 4
    • The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter I, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 5
  3. (intransitive) To open wide; to display a gap.
    • The wound was gaping open and losing too much blood.
    • May that ground gape, and swallow me alive, / Where I shall kneel to him who slew my father!c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  4. (intransitive) To open the passage to the vomeronasal organ, analogous to the flehming in other animals.
  5. To depict a dilated anal or vaginal cavity upon penetrative sexual activity.

Noun

gape (countable and uncountable, plural gapes)

  1. (uncommon) An act of gaping; a yawn.
    • Now a gen'ral gape goes round,
      And vapours cloud each sleepy head.1745, Richard Graves, Euphrosyne
  2. A large opening.
  3. (uncountable) A disease in poultry caused by gapeworm in the windpipe, a symptom of which is frequent gaping.
  4. The width of an opening.
  5. The maximum opening of the mouth (of a bird, fish, etc.) when it is open.

gape meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

gape in Tamil

முறைத்துப் பார், முறைப்பு, வாய் பிளப்பு, வியப்பில் வாய் பிள, அலகிடைப் பிளவு

gape in Urdu

جماہی لینا, منہ کھول کر دیکھنا

gape in Bengali

হাঁ করে তাকানো

gape in Malayalam

വാ പൊളിക്കുക, പിളർക്കുക, വലിച്ചുകീറുക, കോട്ടുവായിടുക
More languagesFewer languages
gape in Kannada
ಪೂರ್ತಿತೆರೆದ ಬಾಯಿ, ಆಕಳಿಕೆ, ದೊಡ್ಡ ಕಿಂಡಿ, ಬಿಟ್ಟ ಬಾಯಿ ಬಿಟ್ಟಂತೆ ನೋಡು
gape in Sanskrit
हर्मन् harman
gape in Malay
nganga
gape in Persian
فاژیدن fāžidan, فاژه fāže

Examples of gape in a sentence

  • Brother Francine demands stronger rules, damns the needs of the body, and then sneaks off to a public pool to gape obscenely at the casually exposed flesh.1982 February 13, Michael Bronski, “Boys from Catholic School”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 7:
  • The hungry grave for her due tribute gapes:a. 1699, John Denham, Cato Major, Of Old Age: A Poem, published 1710, page 25:

All 23 example sentences with gape

Forms of gape

Verb
third-person singular presentgapes
present participlegaping
past participlegaped
pastgaped
Noun
pluralgapes

Past tense of gape: gaped

Origin of gape

From Middle English gapen, from Old Norse gapa (“to gape”) (compare Swedish gapa, Danish gabe), from Proto-Germanic *gapōną (descendants Middle English geapen, Dutch gapen, German gaffen), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰеh₂b-. Cognates include Russian зяпа (zjapa). Doublet of gap.

Words formed from gape

Phrases with gape

Words that rhyme with gape

21 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gape

What does gape mean?
Gape means to open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise.
What is gape in Tamil?
Gape in Tamil is முறைத்துப் பார், முறைப்பு, வாய் பிளப்பு. See Gape meaning in Tamil.
How do you use gape in a sentence?
Brother Francine demands stronger rules, damns the needs of the body, and then sneaks off to a public pool to gape obscenely at the casually exposed flesh.
What part of speech is gape?
Gape can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce gape?
Gape is pronounced /ˈɡeɪp/.
What is the past tense of gape?
The past tense of gape is gaped.

Words near gape in the dictionary

  1. gap-fills
  2. gap-lapper
  3. gap-lappers
  4. gap-toothed
  5. Gapan
  6. gape
  7. gape for
  8. gape seed
  9. gape seeds
  10. gape-mouthed
  11. gaped

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gape (page history and authors); gape (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gape (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gape (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gape (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gape (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); हर्मन् (Sanskrit) (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.

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

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