gentoo

gentoo noun: gentoo penguin.

Noun (1)

gentoo (plural gentoos)

Gentoo (plural Gentoos)

(historical) A non-Muslim inhabitant of India, a Hindu; specifically, in Southern India, an ethnic-Telugu.
- The Greeks, and all the Celtic nations, accordingly, burned the bodies of the dead, as the Gentoos do at this day; while the Egyptians, among whom fuel was extremely scarce, placed them in pyramidal monuments, which were the symbols of fire; hence come those prodigious structures which still adorn...1786, Richard Payne Knight, On the Worship of Priapus, section XI
- The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing, unless it have an outside badge, — some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer- meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is somewhat.1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” in Essays (First Series), Boston: James Munroe, p. 133
The gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua), a species of penguin.

Gentoo

plural	gentoos
plural	Gentoos

Of Anglo-Indian origin (17th century), apparently a borrowing from Portuguese gentio (“heathen”) (compare gentile (“pagan”)).

What does gentoo mean?: Gentoo means gentoo penguin.
What is gentoo in Hindi?: Gentoo in Hindi is जेंटू (jẽṭū). See Gentoo meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is gentoo?: Gentoo can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of gentoo?: The plural of gentoo is gentoos.

Adapted from Wiktionary: gentoo (page history and authors); Gentoo (page history and authors); जेंटू (Hindi) (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

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