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PlainSpell

gonna

/ˈɡʌn.ə/verb

gonna is a verb meaning “A modal used to express a future action that is being planned or prepared for in the present” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-O-N-N-A and has 2 syllables, and it appears 195 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does gonna mean?

verb

  1. 1

    colloquialA modal used to express a future action that is being planned or prepared for in the present.

    I'm gonna hafta find a new job soon.

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

How do you pronounce gonna?

  • UK /ɡən.ə/
  • US /ˈɡʌn.ə/
  • US /ˈɡɔn.ə/

Gonna has 2 syllables (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: En-us-gonna.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of gonna

  • gon
  • gon'
  • gunna
  • gonner
  • gunner
  • gna

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

How common is gonna?

Gonna appears 195 times per million words in written English, the 516th 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).

Words people confuse with gonna

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

gonna vs gunna0 B

Also written: gon, gunna, gunner.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

How do you abbreviate gonna?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of gonna: gna.

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

Where does gonna come from?

Contraction of going to. Attested since 1913 (OED, "gonna"). The pronunciation of present participles with the sound n rather than ng has a long history (see g-dropping on Wikipedia).

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