Word.ws English Dictionary

gooseneck

US/ˈɡusˌnɛk/

gooseneck noun: anything with a slender curved shape, resembling the neck of a goose, such as the shaft of some lamps. Also the ellipsis of gooseneck barnacle.

Noun

gooseneck (plural goosenecks)

  1. (attributive, often) Anything with a slender curved shape, resembling the neck of a goose, such as the shaft of some lamps.
    • A gooseneck lamp can be swiveled around an object, allowing a good examination of all its surfaces.
    • The gooseneck microphone. Mounted to the desk or to the side wall of the booth, the gooseneck offers a limited degree of flexibility for height and depth adjustment of the microphone.1961, James S. Holton, Sound Language Teaching: The State of the Art Today, page 77
  2. The swivel connection on a sailboat located near the bottom of the mast that the boom attaches to. When a sailboat performs a tack or a jibe the gooseneck swings the boom from one side of the boat to the other.
    • The port-brace, and immediately afterwards the starboard-brace, of the crojack-yard--carried away. This was the big, lowest spar on the mizzen, and as the huge thing of steel swung wildly back and forth the gangster and his followers turned and crouched as they looked up to see. Next, the gooseneck...1914, Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, Chapter XLVI

Verb

gooseneck (third-person singular simple present goosenecks, present participle goosenecking, simple past and past participle goosenecked)

  1. (transitive) To seal (a bag) securely by twisting, folding, and cinching or taping.

Also used as

gooseneck is also the ellipsis of gooseneck barnacle.

gooseneck is also the ellipsis of gooseneck loosestrife.

Forms of gooseneck

Noun
pluralgoosenecks
Verb
third-person singular presentgoosenecks
present participlegoosenecking
past participlegoosenecked
pastgoosenecked

Origin of gooseneck

From goose + neck.

Phrases with gooseneck

Questions about gooseneck

What does gooseneck mean?
Gooseneck means anything with a slender curved shape, resembling the neck of a goose, such as the shaft of some lamps.
What part of speech is gooseneck?
Gooseneck can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gooseneck?
Gooseneck is pronounced /ˈɡusˌnɛk/ (US).
What is the plural of gooseneck?
The plural of gooseneck is goosenecks.

Words near gooseneck in the dictionary

  1. gooseless
  2. gooselike
  3. gooseling
  4. gooselings
  5. goosely
  6. gooseneck
  7. gooseneck barnacle
  8. gooseneck barnacles
  9. gooseneck loosestrife
  10. gooseneck pediment
  11. gooseneck pediments

Source and license

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