gook
/ɡuːk/
"gook" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gook” is an uncommon English word, ranked #67,481 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #67,481
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 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...
| 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) |
Where “gook” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for gook is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡuːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #67,481 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “gook”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is G-O-O-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɡuːk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.