Gormless

//ˈɡɔːmləs// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Lacking intelligence, sense or understanding; foolish. Commonwealth, Ireland, UK

    "Did I ever look so stupid: so gormless as Joseph calls it?"

Adjective
  1. 1
    (British informal) lacking intelligence and vitality wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
chinlesschinlessdulldullgaumlessgaumless

Example

More examples

"Tom is a gutless, spineless, gormless, underachieving twat."

Etymology

From dialectal English gaum (“heed, attention”) + -less (“without”), from Old Norse gaum, from Proto-Germanic *gaumaz, *gaumō (“heed, attention”). The ‘r’ found in this spelling is a vowel-lengthening device common in non-rhotic dialects of English.

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