Gopher
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae (pocket gophers).
- 2 Alternative spelling of gofer. alt-of, alternative
"Crackpot Texan oil magnate Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) gets the idea that a small Scottish fishing village would be a marvellous acquisition for his so-rich-it-makes-you-sick company, Knox Oil and Gas, so he sends an executive gopher named MacIntyre (because that sounds Scottish, yeah – played by Peter Riegert) to close the deal and get the pipeline pencilled in."
- 3 burrowing edible land tortoise of southeastern North America wordnet
- 4 A ground squirrel (Marmotinae spp.).
- 5 burrowing rodent of the family Geomyidae having large external cheek pouches; of Central America and southwestern North America wordnet
Show 6 more definitions
- 6 A gopher tortoise (Gopherus spp.).
- 7 any of various terrestrial burrowing rodents of Old and New Worlds; often destroy crops wordnet
- 8 A gopher rockfish (Sebastes carnatus).
- 9 a native or resident of Minnesota wordnet
- 10 A Golang programmer.
- 11 a zealously energetic person (especially a salesman) wordnet
- 1 An Internet protocol for document search and retrieval. Internet, historical
Example
More examples"Can you see the gopher? No? Neither can I. But it's there!"
Etymology
Perhaps an adaptation of Cajun French gaufre (literally “honeycomb, waffle”), based on the analogy of holes in the ground to the indentations in a honeycomb or a waffle (doublet of waffle). Alternatively, from Muskogean.
From the gopher, mascot of the University of Minnesota, where the Gopher protocol was developed.
Related phrases
More for "gopher"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.