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gawk

/ɡɔːk/noun, verb

gawk is a noun meaning “A cuckoo; (sometimes by extension) any gawky bird” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-A-W-K and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of gawk is gawks.

What does gawk mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A cuckoo; (sometimes by extension) any gawky bird.

  2. 2

    A fool; a simpleton; a stupid or clumsy person.

  3. 3

    A conspicuous or stupid stare or gape; an instance of gawking.

verb

  1. 1

    To stare or gape stupidly.

  2. 2

    To stare conspicuously.

  3. 3

    colloquialvulgarTo suck.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce gawk?

  • /ɡɔːk/
  • /ɡɑk/

Gawk has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-gawk.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of gawk

  • gawks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • gawking participle, present
  • gawked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is gawk?

Gawk appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 59,387th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Gawk in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
GermanTölpel, Einfaltspinsel, Tollpatsch (stupid or clumsy person), blöde glotzen (to stare or gape stupidly)
Spanishmentecato (stupid or clumsy person), sapear (to stare conspicuously)
Frenchbadauder, bayer aux corneilles, béer (to stare or gape stupidly)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does gawk come from?

From a variant of gowk, from Middle English gowke, goke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”). Cognate with Danish gøg, Swedish gök, German Gauch, Old English ġēac. Compare also French gauche, and English gawky and gallock.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).