gaw
/ɡɔː/US/ɡɔ/
gaw verb: to gape or stare.
Verb
gaw (third-person singular simple present gaws, present participle gawing, simple past and past participle gawed)
Interjection
- An expletive expressing disbelief, disdain, or horror
- "Gaw!" he whispered, "I don' like dead bodies some'ow! I'd almost rather that chap was alive."1907, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “On Goat Island”, in The War in the Air: […], London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- fiddlesticks, get out of town, pull the other one, Jeebus, Jiminy Cricket, 'sblood, pfaugh, pshaw, pooh, gorblimey
Proper noun capitalized: Gaw
Gaw
- A surname from Scottish Gaelic.
Synonyms of gaw
- fiddlesticks
- get out of town
- pull the other one
- Jeebus
- Jiminy Cricket
- 'sblood
- pfaugh
- pshaw
- pooh
- gorblimey
1 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of gaw
| third-person singular present | gaws |
|---|---|
| present participle | gawing |
| past participle | gawed |
| past | gawed |
Origin of gaw
From Middle English gowen (“to stare”), from Old Norse gá.
Minced oath for God.
From Scottish Gaelic gall (“foreigner or stranger”), meaning: * (Ireland) a person from Wales or England who immigrated after the Norman invasion, or * (Scotland) a person from Scandinavia or the English-speaking lowlands.
Words formed from gaw
Words that rhyme with gaw
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about gaw
- What does gaw mean?
- Gaw means to gape or stare.
- What part of speech is gaw?
- Gaw can be a verb, an interjection or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce gaw?
- Gaw is pronounced /ɡɔː/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of gaw?
- The past tense of gaw is gawed.
Words near gaw in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gaw (page history and authors); Gaw (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-gaw.wav.
Cite this entry: “gaw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gaw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.