Word.ws English Dictionary

Gotham

/ˈɡɒθəm/

Gotham proper noun: nickname for New York City: a major city in New York, United States. Also the ellipsis of Gotham City.

Proper noun

Gotham

  1. Nickname for New York City: a major city in New York, United States.
    • This passage of the erudite Linkum was applied to the city of Gotham, of which he was once Lord Mayor, as appears by his picture hung up in the hall of that ancient city;—but his observation fits this best of all possible cities "to a hair." It is a melancholy truth that this same New-York, though...[1807 April 18, Will Wizard [pseudonym; Washington Irving [et al.]], “Saturday, April 18, 1807. On Style.”, in Salmagundi: Or, The Whim-whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. and Others...
    • Naturally sweetened desserts—delicious ones—have several hiding places in Gotham, and the Upper East Side's Candle Café is among the best.2010, Jared Koch, Alex Van Buren, Clean Plates Manhattan 2011 […] , page 99
  2. A village and civil parish in Rushcliffe borough, Nottinghamshire, England, associated in folklore with insanity (OS grid ref SK5330).

Also used as

Gotham is also the ellipsis of Gotham City.

Origin of Gotham

“Homestead where goats are kept”, from Old English gāt (“goat”) + hām (“home”). * (New York City nickname): First used 1807 by Washington Irving in his Salmagundi Papers: see the quotation. The original pronunciation had /th/ with later loss of /h/. The pronunciation with /θ/ is a spelling pronunciation that arose from a misreading of th as a digraph.

Words formed from Gotham

Questions about Gotham

What does Gotham mean?
Gotham means nickname for New York City: a major city in New York, United States.
What part of speech is Gotham?
Gotham is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Gotham?
Gotham is pronounced /ˈɡɒθəm/.

Words near Gotham in the dictionary

  1. goth-like
  2. Goth.
  3. Gotha
  4. gothabillies
  5. gothabilly
  6. Gotham
  7. Gothamist
  8. Gothamists
  9. Gothamite
  10. Gothamites
  11. Gothard

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Gotham (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-Gotham (Batman).wav.

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