gook
/ɡuːk/
gook noun: a Korean person (especially the North Koreans during the Korean War).
Noun (1)
gook (plural gooks)
- A Korean person (especially the North Koreans during the Korean War).
- A few days later he had a 'damned good party' at NORMASH, drinking brandy, and he then 'beat up a Gook [Korean] village.' This resulted in an 'awful hangover all day', […] Later, he walked back to his unit, alone at three o'clock in the morning, having 'swiped a Gook torch.'2002, Colin Baker, Wild Goose: The Life and Death of Hugh Van Oppen, pages 59–60
- A Vietnamese person (including, but not limited to, Vietcong in the Vietnam War).
- Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead.1979, Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers, New York: Bantam Books, published 1980, →ISBN, page 57
- Synonyms:
- dink
- A foreigner (to the speaker), especially the (enemy) natives of a place the speaker's military is at war with or in.
- "Haiti is a country with a history, […]" "but how about the Marines, and the gendarmerie; aren't they on the job?" […] "You know darn well a civilian can't get away with handling a gook like a Marine can; […]"1924 September 30, John Webb, “Henri II”, in Adventure, volume 48, number 6, page 101
- In scenes [in Flight, 1929] based on the Marines' slaughter of several hundred Nicaraguan rebels at the Battle of Ocotal in July 1927, the two heroes, who are rivals for the hand of a vivacious nurse (Lila Lee), repeatedly attack the "gooks" in support of their comrades on the ground.1999, M. Paul Holsinger, War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 204
Noun (2)
IPA/ɡʊk/
gook (countable and uncountable, plural gooks)
Noun (3)
gook (plural gooks)
- A dull or hapless person.
- the poor old gook was spitting blood1949, P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season
Noun (4)
gook (plural gooks)
- A bonnet (headwear).
- Some say 'Mar Teazer do live in pattens and gook; must go to bed in 'em I'm thinking!1893, Dolly Pentreath, In a Cornish Township with Old Vogue Folk, page 26
Verb
gook (third-person singular simple present gooks, present participle gooking, simple past and past participle gooked)
gook meaning in Urdu
gook in Urdu
- گرد, غلاظت
Synonyms of gook
Forms of gook
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | gooks |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | gooks |
| present participle | gooking |
| past participle | gooked |
| past | gooked |
Origin of gook
First attested in the 1890s, US military slang in reference to Filipinos (in particular, it is defined in an 1893 citation in Slang and Its Analogues as referring to prostitutes who followed army camps; it is defined similarly in a 1914 work). The word was used for Nicaraguans during the US military occupation there in the 1910s, and for Haitians during the US invasion there, when Herbert Seligman noted in 1920 that "The Haitians … are nicknamed 'Gooks'". Other early uses in the 1920 and 30s still refer to people from the Philippines (a 1921 work refers to the Philippines as "Gook Land"), and the term also resembles goo-goo (“a Filipino person”), for which a variety of etymologies have been proposed; see that entry for more. (A later folk etymology suggests that during the Korean War, North Korean soldiers would shout Korean 美國 (Miguk, “America”) at Americans, who interpreted it as "me gook", as if identifying themselves as "gooks"; this ignores the many earlier examples of the word outside Korea.) Gook was used of Pacific Islanders by World War II, and Koreans and Vietnamese people by the time of the 1950s and 60s US military interventions there, which cemented the shift to...
Possible blend of goop + gunk, or related to gobbledygook.
From the manner whereby a small child, still developing its speech, would mispronounce /l/ (spoken with the tip of the tongue behind the teeth) as /ɡ/ (spoken with the back of the tongue on the palate), which happens if one tries to say look without moving the tongue forward, thus requiring less effort to speak. Compare also wook and wike for “look” and “like”, in which cases the tongue is stationary and only the lips move.
Words formed from gook
Phrases with gook
Words that rhyme with gook
Questions about gook
- What does gook mean?
- Gook means a Korean person (especially the North Koreans during the Korean War).
- What is gook in Urdu?
- Gook in Urdu is گرد, غلاظت. See Gook meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is gook?
- Gook can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce gook?
- Gook is pronounced /ɡuːk/.
- What is the plural of gook?
- The plural of gook is gooks.
Words near gook in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gook (page history and authors); gook (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: En-au-gook.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gook.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gook. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.