Goff

name, noun

name, noun ·1 syllable ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Obsolete form of golf (“ball game”). Scotland, alt-of, obsolete, uncountable

    "Forester soon took an aversion to the game of goff, and recollected Scotch reels with less contempt."

  2. 2
    A fool; a clown. obsolete

    "He calls the bishop Grey-beard Goff, And makes his power a mere scoff."

  3. 3
    Synonym of bump (“sudden movement of underground strata”).
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
  2. 2
    A minor city in Nemaha County, Kansas, United States.

Synonyms

All synonyms
bump

Example

More examples

"Forester soon took an aversion to the game of goff, and recollected Scotch reels with less contempt."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Compare French goffe (“ill-made, awkward”), Italian goffo, Spanish gofo, German dialect Goff (“a blockhead”).

Etymology 2

* As a Welsh surname, related to Gough. * As an English surname of Cornish and Breton origin, from gov (“smith”). * As an Irish surname, reduced from McGoff, from McGough.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.