Word.ws English Dictionary

goof

/ɡuːf/

goof noun: a mistake or error.

Noun

goof (plural goofs)

  1. (US, informal) A mistake or error.
    • I made a goof in that last calculation.
    1. (US, informal) An error made during production which finds its way into the final release.
  2. (Canada, US, informal) A foolish and/or silly person; a goofball.
    • Your little brother is a total goof.
  3. (Canada, slang) A rapist.

Verb

goof (third-person singular simple present goofs, present participle goofing, simple past and past participle goofed)

  1. (US) To make a mistake.
    • It's my fault. I goofed.
    • GCN is in a sticky situation because we goofed and bought 10 pounds of a type of wax that we cannot use.1986 August 9, “Attention Art World”, in Gay Community News, page 13
  2. (US) To engage in mischief.
    • We were just goofing by painting the neighbor's cat green.
    Synonyms:
    goof around

goof meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Kannada and Gujarati

goof in Tamil

தவறு, மூடன்

goof in Urdu

احمق, بےوقوف, بدھو

goof in Kannada

ದಡ್ಡ, ಎಡವಟ್ಟು, ಪೆದ್ದುಕೆಲಸ

goof in Gujarati

ગોફ
More languagesFewer languages
goof in Persian
گاف gâf

Examples of goof in a sentence

  • If I go near a skateboard, I'm sure I'm just going to goof up and fall off.
  • I tried to fix it, but I think I just goofed it up some more.
  • Beats me how he finds out when we're goofing off.

All 19 example sentences with goof

Synonyms of goof

27 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of goof

Forms of goof

Noun
pluralgoofs
Verb
third-person singular presentgoofs
present participlegoofing
past participlegoofed
pastgoofed

Past tense of goof: goofed

Origin of goof

Perhaps from dialectal English goff (“foolish clown”), from earlier goffe, in which case further etymology is uncertain. Perhaps from Middle English goffen (“to speak in a frivolous manner”), possibly from Old English gaf, ġegaf (“base; wanton; lewd”, adjective), ġegaf (“buffoonery; scurrility”, noun), gaffetung, golfettung (“buffoonery; mockery”). Compare English dialectal gauffin (“lightheaded; foolish; giddy”), Scots gaff, gawf (“to talk loudly; babble”), Scots gaffaw (“a loud laugh”). Alternatively, perhaps from Middle French goffe (“awkward; stupid”). Compare also Spanish gofo, Italian goffo.

Words formed from goof

Words that rhyme with goof

7 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about goof

What does goof mean?
Goof means a mistake or error.
What is goof in Tamil?
Goof in Tamil is தவறு, மூடன். See Goof meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is goof?
Goof can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce goof?
Goof is pronounced /ɡuːf/.
What is the plural of goof?
The plural of goof is goofs.

Words near goof in the dictionary

  1. gooeyducks
  2. gooeyer
  3. gooeyest
  4. gooeyness
  5. gooeys
  6. goof
  7. goof around
  8. goof off
  9. goof on
  10. goof up
  11. goof-off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goof (page history and authors); goof (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); goof (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); goof (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); goof (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-goof.ogg.

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