gigolo

Syllables: gig·o·lo/ˈd͡ʒɪɡ.ə.ləʊ/US/ˈd͡ʒɪɡ.ə.loʊ/

gigolo noun: a man funded by women who find him attractive, particularly.

Noun

gigolo (plural gigolos)

A man funded by women who find him attractive, particularly
- How's the, uh, gigolo campaign going?1972, Jay Presson Allen, Cabaret, spoken by Brian Roberts (Michael York)
1. (dated) A hired escort or dancing partner.
  - I'm just a gigolo / And everywhere I go / People know the part I'm playin' / Paid for every dance / Sellin' each romance / Ooh, what they're sayin'1929, “Just a Gigolo”, Irving Caesar (lyrics), Leonello Casucci (music)
2. A male prostitute with female clients.

Verb

gigolo (third-person singular simple present gigoloes or gigolos, present participle gigoloing, simple past and past participle gigoloed)

(intransitive) To work or act as a gigolo.
- He says he worked at one thing and another, whatever he could get, but near as I can figure out he was mostly gigoloing, and not finding too many heavy-money dames.1933, Dashiel Hammett, chapter 11, in The Thin Man
- Since my arrival I’d lost seventeen pounds. What with gigoloing all night, working all day, worrying myself flaming sick, I’d had enough.1988, John Grant (as Jonathan Gash), chapter 30, in Jade Woman, page 221
(transitive) To provide (someone) with the services of a gigolo.
- He sat down at my table in an outdoor trattoria to gigolo me and promptly forgot his lines and went blank.1982, Tom McHale, chapter 20, in Dear Friends, page 217
- The beach wasn’t crowded yet, and as far as I could tell, there were no gigolos or women waiting to be gigoloed.2008, Liz Tuccillo, How to Be Single, page 247
(reflexive, transitive) To offer (oneself or someone else) to someone as a gigolo.
- It might be a joke on the rest of the world; it was also a joke on himself, that he had gigoloed himself to such scurfy stuff.1931, Samuel Roth, chapter 21, in The Private Life of Frank Harris, page 257
- What would have happened just then I do not know, if Mr. Vertigo had not appeared with the family collie, whom he had gigoloed to Carl Schurz Park.1968, MacKinlay Kantor, The Day I Met a Lion, page 33

gigolo meaning in Malayalam, Arabic, Persian and Vietnamese

gigolo in Malayalam

playboy, (male) escort, admirer: ആൺവേശ്യ, പുരുഷലെെംഗികതൊഴിലാളി, പെണ്ണൊട്ടി മൂരിശൃംഗാരക്കാരൻ, പെണ്ണാളൻ, കളിക്കുട്ടി, അകമ്പടി

gigolo in Arabic

hired escort or dancing partner: دَاعِر dāʕir, بَغِيّ baḡiyy, عَاهِر ʕāhir, زَانِيّ zāniyy, فَاحِش fāḥiš
male having sexual relationships for money: دَاعِر dāʕir, بَغِيّ baḡiyy, عَاهِر ʕāhir, زَانِيّ zāniyy, فَاحِش fāḥiš

gigolo in Persian

hired escort or dancing partner: ژیگولو žigulu
male having sexual relationships for money: ژیگولو žigulu

gigolo in Vietnamese

male having sexual relationships for money: kĩ nam, trai bao

Synonyms of gigolo

male prostitute

Forms of gigolo

Noun
plural	gigolos
Verb
third-person singular present	gigoloes
third-person singular present	gigolos
present participle	gigoloing
past participle	gigoloed
past	gigoloed

Origin of gigolo

First attested in English in 1922. From French gigolo (“young lover kept by an older woman”), first attested in that sense in 1904 (attested since 1850 in the sense “Amant de cœur, compagnon d'une gigolette", and since 1894 in the sense “elegant young man whose means of livelihood are dubious”), a back-formation from gigolette (“promiscuous dancing girl, girl available for hire as a dancing partner”), attested since 1850, from giguer (“to dance”), from gigue (“fiddle; type of dance; jig”). More at jig.

Questions about gigolo

What does gigolo mean?: Gigolo means a man funded by women who find him attractive, particularly.
What is gigolo in Malayalam?: Gigolo in Malayalam is ആൺവേശ്യ, പുരുഷലെെംഗികതൊഴിലാളി, പെണ്ണൊട്ടി മൂരിശൃംഗാരക്കാരൻ. See Gigolo meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is gigolo?: Gigolo can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gigolo?: Gigolo is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɪɡ.ə.loʊ/ (US).
What is the plural of gigolo?: The plural of gigolo is gigolos.

Words near gigolo in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: gigolo (page history and authors); gigolo (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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-gigolo.wav.

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