Word.ws English Dictionary

gonnabe

Syllables: gon·na·be/ˈɡənəbi/US/ˈɡʌnəbi/

gonnabe noun: one who is on the path to becoming famous or important.

Noun

gonnabe (plural gonnabes)

  1. (informal) One who is on the path to becoming famous or important.
    • I attribute any success I have to the following educators in my life: New York agent Jim Cypher […] early on taught me that the difference between “wannabes” and “gonnabes” is persistence; […]2006, Linda Alice Dewey, “Acknowledgements”, in Aaron’s Crossing: An Inspiring True Ghost Story, Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 206
    • Alkaline Trio, New Found Glory, Coheed and Cambria, the Starting Line: all have struggled to meet high expectations, and maybe some of them were relieved to be playing this summer’s Warped Tour, nestled among the wannabes and gonnabes.2007 August 6, Kelefa Sanneh, “Punk on parade, with flexible marching orders”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 Nov...

Examples of gonnabe in a sentence

  • You can throw money at a wannabe but that won’t make him a gonnabe.2014, Tom Pease, “Touring Entrepreneurship Land and Meriting Citizenship: You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have”, in Small Business Survival...
  • 'So you're a wannabe?' / 'Hopefully, a gonnabe.'2022, Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck, American Blues […], Berkeley, Calif.: She Writes Press, →ISBN:

Forms of gonnabe

pluralgonnabes

Origin of gonnabe

From gonna (“contraction of going to”) + be, modelled after wannabe.

Questions about gonnabe

What does gonnabe mean?
Gonnabe means one who is on the path to becoming famous or important.
How do you use gonnabe in a sentence?
You can throw money at a wannabe but that won’t make him a gonnabe.
What part of speech is gonnabe?
Gonnabe is a noun.
How do you pronounce gonnabe?
Gonnabe is pronounced /ˈɡənəbi/ (UK).
What is the plural of gonnabe?
The plural of gonnabe is gonnabes.

Words near gonnabe in the dictionary

  1. gonks
  2. gonks out
  3. Gonn
  4. Gonn Crossing
  5. gonna
  6. gonnabe
  7. gonnabes
  8. gonnardite
  9. gonnardites
  10. gonnegtion
  11. gonnegtions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gonnabe (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:

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

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