gowk

From the Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡaʊk/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊk

gowk (plural gowks)

1. (Northern England, Scotland) A cuckoo.
2. A fool.
   • 1816, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 8, in Old Mortality:

     "Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper.

   • 1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 83:

     "What does it look like?" "Like...like..." Catweazle made boulder-like gestures in the air, "like a wogle-stone, thou gowk."

   • 1976, Robert Nye, Falstaff:

     God has sent me gowks for secretaries.

   • 2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 303:

     `You daft great gowk, puttin' yerself in the way of harm after all this time out of a war.'

gowk (third-person singular simple present gowks, present participle gowking, simple past and past participle gowked)

1. To make foolish; to stupefy.
   • 1632 (first performance)​, Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “The Magnetick Lady: Or, Humors Reconcil’d. A Comedy […]”, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The Second Volume. […] (Second Folio), London: […] Richard Meighen, published 1640, OCLC 51546498:

     look how the man stands as he were gowk'd

From Northern Middle English yolke, yholke (“yolk; central part”), from Old English ġeolca, ġeoloca, ġioleca (“yolk”), from Old English ġeolu (“yellow”) + -ca (diminutive suffix). In modern English, the original sense ("the central part of any thing") has gradually fallen out of use, except in relation to apples. Doublet of yolk.

• IPA^(key): /ɡaʊk/, [ˈɡæʊ̯ˀk]

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

gowk (plural gowks)

1. (Tyneside) An apple core.
2. (Tyneside, obsolete) The central part of any thing. [until early 20th c.]