Gowk
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A cuckoo. Northern-England, Scotland
- 2 An apple core. Geordie
- 3 A fool.
""Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper."
- 4 The central part of any thing; pith; core. Geordie, obsolete
- 5 The hard centre of a boil or sore. dialectal
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 The yolk of an egg. dialectal
- 7 The inner part of a haystack. dialectal
- 1 To make foolish; to stupefy.
"look how the man stands as he were gowk'd"
- 2 To retch; vomit. dialectal
Example
More examples""Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper."
Etymology
From Middle English goke, gowke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰegʰuǵʰ- (“cuckoo”).
Origin uncertain. Likely from Middle English coke, colk (“the core or heart of an apple or onion, pith”), from Old English *colc (“the gullet, esophagus; pit of the stomach; trench, pit, gully”), from Proto-West Germanic *kolk, from Proto-Germanic *kulkaz, *kulukaz (“gullet”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷel- (“to devour, swallow, gulp; throat, gullet”). Possibly a doublet of coke.
Compare Norwegian Nynorsk gulka (“to burp, belch”). Compare also Scots cowk (“to strain, retch”), Dutch kolken (“to belch”), German kolken (“to gulp”), dialectal German kölken, kolksen (“to vomit”), Danish kulke (“to gulp”).
Related phrases
More for "gowk"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.