gopher
/ˈɡoʊfɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.87 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A small burrowing rodent native to North and Central America, especially in the family Geomyidae (pocket gophers).
noun
A ground squirrel (Marmotinae spp.).
noun
A gopher tortoise (Gopherus spp.).
noun
A gopher rockfish (Sebastes carnatus).
noun
Alternative spelling of gofer (“worker who runs errands”).
name
An Internet protocol for document search and retrieval.
noun
Alternative letter-case form of gopher.
Example Sentences
- "I'm not at all advocating for any Gophers to switch to Haskell—there are far too many reasons to keep coding and deploying Go solutions to address here."
- "Crackpot Texan oil magnate Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) gets the idea that a small Scottish fishing village would be a marvellous acquisition for his so-rich-it-makes-you-sick company, Knox Oil and Gas, so he sends an executive gopher named MacIntyre (because that sounds Scottish, yeah – played by Peter Riegert) to close the deal and get the pipeline pencilled in."
Etymology
Perhaps an adaptation of Cajun French gaufre (literally “honeycomb, waffle”), based on the analogy of holes in the ground to the indentations in a honeycomb or a waffle (doublet of waffle). Alternatively, from Muskogean.
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡoʊfɚ/
- British English: /ˈɡəʊfə/