Word.ws English Dictionary

Gawain

/ɡəˈweɪn/

Gawain proper noun: one of the greatest knights in Arthurian legend; he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table.

gawain: one of the greatest knights in Arthurian legend; he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the...
Image: Howard Pyle, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Gawain

  1. One of the greatest knights in Arthurian legend; he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table.

Forms of Gawain

alternative formGawaine

Origin of Gawain

From Middle English Gawayne, from Old French Gauvain, from Old Welsh [Term?], probably of Celtic origin, like many other characters from Arthurian legends, perhaps from Proto-Brythonic *gwalx (“hawk”) (from Proto-Celtic *wolkos) + *gwɨnn (“white”). Doublet of Gavin. More at Gawain.

Questions about Gawain

What does Gawain mean?
Gawain means one of the greatest knights in Arthurian legend; he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table.
What part of speech is Gawain?
Gawain is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Gawain?
Gawain is pronounced /ɡəˈweɪn/.

Words near Gawain in the dictionary

  1. Gavyn
  2. gavyuti
  3. gavyutis
  4. gaw
  5. GAWA
  6. Gawain
  7. Gawaine
  8. Gawar-Bati
  9. Gawber
  10. gawbies
  11. gawblimey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Gawain (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)-Sumxr-Gawain.wav.

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