Word.ws English Dictionary

gongoozle

gongoozle verb: to leisurely watch the passage of boats, from the bank of a canal, lock or bridge.

Verb

gongoozle (third-person singular simple present gongoozles, present participle gongoozling, simple past and past participle gongoozled)

  1. (intransitive) To leisurely watch the passage of boats, from the bank of a canal, lock or bridge.
  2. (intransitive) To observe things idly.

Forms of gongoozle

third-person singular presentgongoozles
present participlegongoozling
past participlegongoozled
pastgongoozled

Origin of gongoozle

Possibly arose from Lincolnshire dialect, in which gawn and gooze both mean stare or gape. Popularised by L. T. C. Rolt in Narrow Boat (1944), a book on canal life.

Words formed from gongoozle

Questions about gongoozle

What does gongoozle mean?
Gongoozle means to leisurely watch the passage of boats, from the bank of a canal, lock or bridge.
What part of speech is gongoozle?
Gongoozle is a verb.
What is the past tense of gongoozle?
The past tense of gongoozle is gongoozled.

Words near gongoozle in the dictionary

  1. gongman
  2. gongmen
  3. Gongnong
  4. GONGO
  5. Gongolgon
  6. gongoozle
  7. gongoozled
  8. gongoozler
  9. gongoozlers
  10. gongoozles
  11. gongoozling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gongoozle (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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