gorge
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "gorge", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "gorge" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "gorge" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
gorge is aEnglishnoun. It means: The front aspect of the neck; the outside of the throat. Pronounced /ɡɔːdʒ/. Often confused with GRE and gory.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | gorge |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɡɔːdʒ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #17,149 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for gorge is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɡɔːdʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #17,149 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for gorge, with forms such as "ggorge", "gogre", and "goreg". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "GRE", "gory", "gove", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English gorge (“esophagus, gullet; throat; bird's crop; food in a hawk's crop; food or drink that has been eaten”), a borrowing from Old French gorge (“throat”) (modern French gorge (“throat; breast”)), from Vulgar Latin *gorga, *gurga, from Lat… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is gorge, spelled G-O-R-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The front aspect of the neck; the outside of the throat.
- 2The inside of the throat; the esophagus, the gullet; (falconry, specifically) the crop or gizzard of a hawk.
- 3The throat of a flower.
- 4Food that has been taken into the gullet or the stomach, particularly if it is regurgitated or vomited out.
- 5A choking or filling of a channel or passage by an obstruction; the obstruction itself.
- 6A concave moulding; a cavetto.
- 7The rearward side of an outwork, a bastion, or a fort, often open, or not protected against artillery; a narrow entry passage into the outwork of an enclosed fortification.
- 8A primitive device used instead of a hook to catch fish, consisting of an object that is easy to swallow but difficult to eject or loosen, such as a piece of bone or stone pointed at each end and attached in the middle to a line.
- 9A deep, narrow passage with steep, rocky sides, particularly one with a stream running through it; a ravine.
- 10The groove of a pulley.
- 11A whirlpool used as a heraldic charge.
Etymology
From Middle English gorge (“esophagus, gullet; throat; bird's crop; food in a hawk's crop; food or drink that has been eaten”), a borrowing from Old French gorge (“throat”) (modern French gorge (“throat; breast”)), from Vulgar Latin *gorga, *gurga, from Latin gurges (“eddy, whirlpool; gulf; sea”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *gʷerh₃- (“to devour, swallow; to eat”). The English word is cognate with Galician gorxa (“throat”), Italian gorga, gorgia (“gorge, ravine; (obsolete) throat”), Occitan gorga, gorja, Portuguese gorja (“gullet, throat; gorge”), Spanish gorja (“gullet, throat; gorge”). Doublet of gour and gurges.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ggorge,gogre,goreg,gorgge,gorrge,groge,ogrge
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for gorge
Misspelling Variants of "gorge"
Frequency rank: #17,149 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter G in our English index: