Word.ws English Dictionary

gowk

/ɡaʊk/

gowk noun: a cuckoo.

Noun (1)

gowk (plural gowks)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) A cuckoo.
  2. A fool.
    • "Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper.1816, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 8, in Old Mortality
    • "What does it look like?" "Like...like..." Catweazle made boulder-like gestures in the air, "like a wogle-stone, thou gowk."1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 83

Verb (1)

gowk (third-person singular simple present gowks, present participle gowking, simple past and past participle gowked)

  1. To make foolish; to stupefy.
    • look how the man stands as he were gowk'd1632 (first performance), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “The Magnetick Lady: Or, Humors Reconcil’d. A Comedy […]”, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The Second Volume. […] (Second Folio)...

Noun (2)

gowk (plural gowks)

  1. (Geordie) An apple core.
  2. (Geordie, obsolete) The central part of any thing; pith; core.
  3. (dialectal) The hard centre of a boil or sore.
  4. (dialectal) The yolk of an egg.
  5. (dialectal) The inner part of a haystack.

Verb (2)

gowk (third-person singular simple present gowks, present participle gowking, simple past and past participle gowked)

  1. (dialectal) To retch; vomit.

Forms of gowk

Noun
pluralgowks
alternative formgoke
alternative formgoak
alternative formgauk
alternative formgouk
alternative formgeak
alternative formcowk
Verb
third-person singular presentgowks
present participlegowking
past participlegowked
pastgowked

Origin of gowk

From Middle English goke, gowke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰegʰuǵʰ- (“cuckoo”).

Origin uncertain. Likely from Middle English coke, colk (“the core or heart of an apple or onion, pith”), from Old English *colc (“the gullet, esophagus; pit of the stomach; trench, pit, gully”), from Proto-West Germanic *kolk, from Proto-Germanic *kulkaz, *kulukaz (“gullet”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷel- (“to devour, swallow, gulp; throat, gullet”). Possibly a doublet of coke.

Compare Norwegian Nynorsk gulka (“to burp, belch”). Compare also Scots cowk (“to strain, retch”), Dutch kolken (“to belch”), German kolken (“to gulp”), dialectal German kölken, kolksen (“to vomit”), Danish kulke (“to gulp”).

Words formed from gowk

Phrases with gowk

Words that rhyme with gowk

Questions about gowk

What does gowk mean?
Gowk means a cuckoo.
What part of speech is gowk?
Gowk can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gowk?
Gowk is pronounced /ɡaʊk/.
What is the plural of gowk?
The plural of gowk is gowks.

Words near gowk in the dictionary

  1. Gowhole
  2. Gowin
  3. Gowing
  4. Gowings
  5. Gowins
  6. gowk
  7. gowked
  8. Gowkie Day
  9. gowking
  10. gowks
  11. Gowkthrapple

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gowk (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-gowk.wav.

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