Word.ws English Dictionary

gormless

UK/ˈɡɔːmləs/

gormless adjective: lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish.

Adjective

gormless (comparative more gormless, superlative most gormless)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK) Lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish.
    • Did I ever look so stupid: so gormless as Joseph calls it?1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC
    • But Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter.1988, Roald Dahl, Matilda, page 4

gormless meaning in Tamil and Bengali

gormless in Tamil

குறையறிவு, பேதை, அறிவிலி

gormless in Bengali

বোকা, নির্বোধ

Examples of gormless in a sentence

  • There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she found rather fascinating.1990, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures, page 171:
  • Not as gormless as he looks in press photographs, then.2007 July 21, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], “The Wedding, Auntie Muriel”, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry...
  • “Don’t just stand there looking gormless.2015, Adele Abbott, Witch Is When Everything Went Crazy, page 33:
  • Damon’s Odysseus is motivated mostly by anxiety and guilt, though he is also eager to protect his boy (Holland is good at playing a gormless young man of twenty going on twelve).2026 August 13, Emily Wilson, “An Uncomplicated Man”, in London Review of Books:

Synonyms of gormless

All synonyms of gormless

Forms of gormless

comparativemore gormless
superlativemost gormless
alternative formgaumless
alternative formgawmless

Origin of gormless

From dialectal English gaum (“heed, attention”) + -less (“without”), from Old Norse gaum, from Proto-Germanic *gaumaz, *gaumō (“heed, attention”). The ‘r’ found in this spelling is a vowel-lengthening device common in non-rhotic dialects of English.

Words formed from gormless

Words that rhyme with gormless

Questions about gormless

What does gormless mean?
Gormless means lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish.
What is gormless in Tamil?
Gormless in Tamil is குறையறிவு, பேதை, அறிவிலி. See Gormless meaning in Tamil.
How do you use gormless in a sentence?
There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she found rather fascinating.
What part of speech is gormless?
Gormless is an adjective.
How do you pronounce gormless?
Gormless is pronounced /ˈɡɔːmləs/ (UK).

Words near gormless in the dictionary

  1. Gormfhlaith
  2. Gormflaith
  3. gormful
  4. gorming
  5. gormint
  6. gormless
  7. gormlessly
  8. gormlessness
  9. Gormley
  10. Gormleys
  11. Gormogon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gormless (page history and authors); gormless (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gormless (Bengali 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-gormless.ogg, en-au-gormless.ogg.

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