Word.ws English Dictionary

gaud

/ɡɔːd/US/ɡɔd/

gaud noun: a cheap showy trinket.

Noun

gaud (plural gauds)

  1. A cheap showy trinket
    • an idle gaudc. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First...
    • But I am heart-set on you, and to win you there is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine...1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC
  2. (obsolete) trick; jest; sport
  3. (obsolete) deceit; fraud; artifice

Verb (1)

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

  1. (obsolete) To bedeck gaudily; to decorate with gauds or showy trinkets or colours; to paint.
    • Nicely gauded cheeks.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Verb (2)

gaud (third-person singular simple present gauds, present participle gauding, simple past and past participle gauded)

  1. To sport or keep festival.
    • gauding with his familiars1579, Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes

Proper noun capitalized: Gaud

Gaud

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Gaur (“ancient Bengali city”).

Examples of gaud in a sentence

  • Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published...
  • Dalmeny lent me red tabs, Evans his brass hat; so that I had the gauds of my appointment in the ceremony of the Jaffa gate, which for me was the supreme moment of the war.1922, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (published 1926)
  • Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer.1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Part I, episode 1:

Forms of gaud

Noun
pluralgauds
Verb
third-person singular presentgauds
present participlegauding
past participlegauded
pastgauded

Origin of gaud

From Middle English gaude, gawde (“jest, prank, trick; ornamental bead in a rosary, trinket, bauble”). Compare Middle English gaudy, gaudee, of the same meaning.

Compare French gaudir (“to rejoice”).

Words formed from gaud

Words that rhyme with gaud

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gaud

What does gaud mean?
Gaud means a cheap showy trinket.
How do you use gaud in a sentence?
Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds.
What part of speech is gaud?
Gaud can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce gaud?
Gaud is pronounced /ɡɔːd/ (UK).
What is the plural of gaud?
The plural of gaud is gauds.

Words near gaud in the dictionary

  1. gauchoes
  2. gauchoesque
  3. gauchos
  4. Gaucin
  5. Gaucins
  6. gaud
  7. Gauda
  8. gaudeamurid
  9. gaudeamurids
  10. gaudeamus
  11. gaudeamuses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gaud (page history and authors); Gaud (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)-AcpoKrane-gaud.wav.

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