gawk

/ɡɔːk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

cot caught merger/ɡɑk/

gawk noun: a cuckoo; (sometimes by extension) any gawky bird.

Noun (1)

gawk (plural gawks)

A cuckoo; (sometimes by extension) any gawky bird.
- His morning prey he craveth; So crowed the gawk of carrion⁶ […] (6) Gawk of carrion = [kenning for] raven.1898, Ari Thorgilsson, The Book of the Settlement of Iceland, page 105
- Some sneakingly fly watching, as the hawk; Or, as a Cuckoo, grow to limb as a gawk.1910, John Bunyan Robinson, Bird Or Feather Convention ..., page 11
A fool; a simpleton; a stupid or clumsy person.
- A Duke of Weissenfels, for instance; foolish old gawk, whom Wilhehmina Princess Royal recollects for his distracted notions, — which were well shaken out of him by Wilhelmina's Brother afterwards.1855, Thomas Carlyle, The Prinzenraub, Westminster Review

Verb

gawk (third-person singular simple present gawks, present participle gawking, simple past and past participle gawked)

To stare or gape stupidly.
To stare conspicuously.

Synonyms:

gaw, gloar, glom, stare
(colloquial, vulgar) To suck.

Noun (2)

gawk (plural gawks)

A conspicuous or stupid stare or gape; an instance of gawking.
- ... the gawks and gapes of townsfolk as stares of admiration.1991, Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly
- ... the gawks and gapes of those who'd expected him to be long dead,[…]2017 March 7, Cat Sparks, Lotus Blue, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN

gawk meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

gawk in Tamil

முட்டாள், அருவருப்பான ஆள், வேடிக்கை பார்க்கிறவர்

gawk in Urdu

بےتکا, ہونق, جھینپو, خبطی, سادہ لوح, منہ پھاڑ کر دیکھنا

gawk in Malayalam

goggle, gape, gaze: പൊട്ടനെപ്പോലെ പകച്ചുനോക്കുക, മര്യാദയില്ലാതെ തുറിച്ചുനോക്കുക, വായ്പൊളിച്ചു തുറിച്ചു നോക്കുക, തുറിച്ച കണ്ണുകൾ പതിപ്പിക്ക, കണ്ണുതുറിപ്പിച്ചു നോക്കുക, തുറിച്ചുനോക്കുക

Examples of gawk in a sentence

I WONDER if you know the cuckoos. […] In Scotlad the popular name for the cuckoo is "the gawk," which means fool. […] But our American cuckoos are a long way from gawks.1916, Inez N. McFee, “The Cuckoos”, in Home and School Visitor, page 276:
[…] threw into a market crate regretfully a somewhat gawky, long-legged youngster that was otherwise exceptionally fine.1923, The New Reliable Poultry Journal, page 640:

All 11 example sentences with gawk

Synonyms of gawk

Forms of gawk

Noun
plural	gawks
Verb
third-person singular present	gawks
present participle	gawking
past participle	gawked
past	gawked

Origin of gawk

From a variant of gowk, from Middle English gowke, goke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”). Cognate with Danish gøg, Swedish gök, German Gauch, Old English ġēac. Compare also French gauche, and English gawky and gallock.

Perhaps from English dialectal gaw (“to stare; gawk”) + -k, as in talk, stalk, etc., ultimately from Old Norse gá (“to heed”).

Words formed from gawk

Words that rhyme with gawk

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gawk

What does gawk mean?: Gawk means a cuckoo; (sometimes by extension) any gawky bird.
What is gawk in Tamil?: Gawk in Tamil is முட்டாள், அருவருப்பான ஆள், வேடிக்கை பார்க்கிறவர். See Gawk meaning in Tamil.
How do you use gawk in a sentence?: I WONDER if you know the cuckoos. […] In Scotlad the popular name for the cuckoo is "the gawk," which means fool. […] But our American cuckoos are a long way from gawks.
What part of speech is gawk?: Gawk can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gawk?: Gawk is pronounced /ɡɔːk/.
What is the plural of gawk?: The plural of gawk is gawks.

Words near gawk in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: gawk (page history and authors); gawk (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gawk (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gawk (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); gawk (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

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

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