Word.ws English Dictionary

gyrene

gyrene noun: a member of the United States Marine Corps.

Noun

gyrene (plural gyrenes)

  1. (informal) A member of the United States Marine Corps.

Forms of gyrene

pluralgyrenes

Origin of gyrene

Uncertain. First attested 1894 in a list of United States Naval Academy slang, where it remained in use at least until 1925. Widely adopted during the Second World War. Often stated to be a blend of GI + marine, but early uses antedate both the widespread adoption of the term GI (c. 1910) and its use to denote individuals (c. late 1930s). Possibly related to Royal Navy slang gerine (“a marine”), though gyrene antedates it in print. gerine is sometimes given as a clipping of tangerine, in reference to the color of the tunics worn by the Royal Marine Light Infantry, but U.S. Marines' uniforms did not have such a color.

Questions about gyrene

What does gyrene mean?
Gyrene means a member of the United States Marine Corps.
What part of speech is gyrene?
Gyrene is a noun.
What is the plural of gyrene?
The plural of gyrene is gyrenes.

Words near gyrene in the dictionary

  1. gyre-carlins
  2. gyred
  3. gyreful
  4. gyrencephalic
  5. gyrencephaly
  6. gyrene
  7. gyrenes
  8. gyres
  9. gyrfalcon
  10. gyrfalcons
  11. gyri

Source and license

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