Noun: gowk
Sample Sentences
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"Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper. [1816, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 8, in Old Mortality:]
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"What does it look like?" "Like...like..." Catweazle made boulder-like gestures in the air, "like a wogle-stone, thou gowk." [1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 83:]
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God has sent me gowks for secretaries. [1976, Robert Nye, Falstaff:]
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`You daft great gowk, puttin' yerself in the way of harm after all this time out of a war.' [2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 303:]
Nouns inflected like gowk
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English goke, gowke, from Old Norse gaukr (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (“cuckoo”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰegʰuǵʰ- (“cuckoo”). See: Middle English Nouns '
goke', Old Norse Nouns '
gaukr'.