Word.ws English Dictionary

gopher

/ˈɡəʊfə/US/ˈɡoʊfɚ/

gopher noun: a small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae (pocket gophers). Also the alternative spelling of gofer.

gopher: a small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae...
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

gopher (plural gophers)

  1. A small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae (pocket gophers).
  2. A ground squirrel (Marmotinae spp.).
  3. A gopher tortoise (Gopherus spp.).
  4. A gopher rockfish (Sebastes carnatus).
  5. (slang) A Go programmer.
    • I'm not at all advocating for any Gophers to switch to Haskell—there are far too many reasons to keep coding and deploying Go solutions to address here.2017, Lex Sheehan, Learning Functional Programming in Go, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 373

Proper noun capitalized: Gopher

Gopher

  1. (Internet, historical) An Internet protocol for document search and retrieval.

Noun (2) capitalized: Gopher

Gopher (plural Gophers)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of gopher.
    • I'm not at all advocating for any Gophers to switch to Haskell—there are far too many reasons to keep coding and deploying Go solutions to address here.2017, Lex Sheehan, Learning Functional Programming in Go, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 373

Also used as

gopher is also the alternative spelling of gofer.

gopher meaning in Arabic

gopher in Arabic

small burrowing rodent
غَوْفَر ḡawfar

Forms of gopher

pluralgophers
alternative formgauffre
pluralGophers

Plural of gopher: gophers

Origin of gopher

Perhaps an adaptation of Cajun French gaufre (literally “honeycomb, waffle”), based on the analogy of holes in the ground to the indentations in a honeycomb or a waffle (doublet of waffle). Alternatively, from Muskogean.

From the gopher, mascot of the University of Minnesota, where the Gopher protocol was developed.

Words formed from gopher

Phrases with gopher

7 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with gopher

Questions about gopher

What does gopher mean?
Gopher means a small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae (pocket gophers).
What is gopher in Arabic?
Gopher in Arabic is غَوْفَر (ḡawfar). See Gopher meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is gopher?
Gopher can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce gopher?
Gopher is pronounced /ˈɡəʊfə/ (UK).
What is the plural of gopher?
The plural of gopher is gophers.

Words near gopher in the dictionary

  1. Gopaul
  2. Gopauls
  3. gopchang
  4. GOPer
  5. GOPers
  6. gopher
  7. gopher apple
  8. gopher apples
  9. gopher ball
  10. gopher balls
  11. gopher frog

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gopher (page history and authors); Gopher (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-gopher.wav.

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