Word.ws English Dictionary

like a martin to his gourd

like a martin to his gourd phrase: straight, unerringly, directly.

Phrase

like a martin to his gourd

  1. (US, regional, simile) Straight, unerringly, directly.
    • The ball flew to its mark like a martin to his gourd and Lucky Ned Pepper fell dead in the saddle.1968, Charles Portis, True Grit
    • Whether all of the above was reason enough I don't know, but I left East St. Louis and, like a martin to its gourd, I headed back to the cotton fields of southeastern Missouri.2008, Paul Self, No Lower Place, page 219

Forms of like a martin to his gourd

alternative formlike a martin to its gourd

Questions about like a martin to his gourd

What does like a martin to his gourd mean?
Like a martin to his gourd means straight, unerringly, directly.
What part of speech is like a martin to his gourd?
Like a martin to his gourd is a phrase.

Words near like a martin to his gourd in the dictionary

  1. like a kid on Christmas morning
  2. like a knife through butter
  3. like a lamb to the slaughter
  4. like a man
  5. like a man possessed
  6. like a martin to his gourd
  7. like a martin to its gourd
  8. like a million bucks
  9. like a million dollars
  10. like a million pounds
  11. like a monkey on a stick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: like a martin to his gourd (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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