gook
/ɡuːk/
"gook" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gook” is uncommon English (frequency #67,481 among 2,313 “G” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #67,481
- frequency rank, English
- 2,313
- “G” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A person of (South) East Asian descent (originally revolutionaries of the Katipunan then generally to any native of the Philippines, after the enemy and collaborators hid amongst them), but now esp...
Corpus desk
Index EN-gook · gook · English
gook · rank #67,481 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #67,481
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,313
- PHOTO-FINISH gopi
Nearest frequency peer: gopi (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Long-tail ranks near “gook”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- glycosylati…
glycosylation
32,522 corpus weight
- gook
gook
32,520 corpus weight
- gopi
gopi
32,519 corpus weight
- Gori
Gori
32,518 corpus weight
- goy
goy
32,517 corpus weight
- gree
gree
32,516 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “gook” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | gook |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡuːk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #67,481 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “gook” in English
Rare enough to double-check
gook is uncommon English at frequency #67,481 among 2,313 “G” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ɡuːk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for gook, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: First attested in the 1890s, US military slang in reference to Filipinos (in particular, it is defined in an 1893 citation in Slang and Its Analogues as referring to prostitutes who followed army camps; it is defined similarly in a 1914 work). The word was … The correct English form is gook, spelled G-O-O-K.
Definition
- 1A person of (South) East Asian descent (originally revolutionaries of the Katipunan then generally to any native of the Philippines, after the enemy and collaborators hid amongst them), but now especially:
- 2A person of (South) East Asian descent (originally revolutionaries of the Katipunan then generally to any native of the Philippines, after the enemy and collaborators hid amongst them), but now especially:
- 3A foreigner (to the speaker), especially the (enemy) natives of a place the speaker's military is at war with or in.
- 4A foreigner (to the speaker), especially the (enemy) natives of a place the speaker's military is at war with or in.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how gook appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
A few days later he had a 'damned good party' at NORMASH, drinking brandy, and he then 'beat up a Gook [Korean] village.' This resulted in an 'awful hangover all day', […] Later, he walked back to his unit, alone at three o'clock in the morning, having 'swiped a Gook torch.'
Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead.
Etymology
First attested in the 1890s, US military slang in reference to Filipinos (in particular, it is defined in an 1893 citation in Slang and Its Analogues as referring to prostitutes who followed army camps; it is defined similarly in a 1914 work). The word was used for Nicaraguans during the US military occupation there in the 1910s, and for Haitians during the US invasion there, when Herbert Seligman noted in 1920 that "The Haitians … are nicknamed 'Gooks'". Other early uses in the 1920 and 30s still refer to people from the Philippines (a 1921 work refers to the Philippines as "Gook Land"), and the term also resembles goo-goo (“a Filipino person”), for which a variety of etymologies have been proposed; see that entry for more. (A later folk etymology suggests that during the Korean War, North Korean soldiers would shout Korean 美國 (Miguk, “America”) at Americans, who interpreted it as "me gook", as if identifying themselves as "gooks"; this ignores the many earlier examples of the word outside Korea.) Gook was used of Pacific Islanders by World War II, and Koreans and Vietnamese people by the time of the 1950s and 60s US military interventions there, which cemented the shift to meaning "Asian".
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "gook", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).