gape
/ˈɡeɪp/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.54 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To open the mouth wide, especially involuntarily, as in a yawn, anger, or surprise.
Intransitive verb
verb
To open the passage to the vomeronasal organ, analogous to the flehming in other animals.
Intransitive verb
verb
To depict a dilated anal or vaginal cavity upon penetrative sexual activity.
Example Sentences
- "1723, Jonathan Swift, The Journal of a Modern Lady, 1810, Samuel Johnson, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 11, page 467, She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, / And asks if it be time to rise;"
- "Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all."
- "Home I vvould go, / But that my Dores are hatefull to my eyes. / Fill'd and damm'd up vvith gaping Creditors, / VVatchfull as Fovvlers vvhen their Game vvill ſpring; […]"
- "The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play."
- "Brother Francine demands stronger rules, damns the needs of the body, and then sneaks off to a public pool to gape obscenely at the casually exposed flesh."
- "The wound was gaping open and losing too much blood."
Etymology
From Middle English gapen, from Old Norse gapa (“to gape”) (compare Swedish gapa, Danish gabe), from Proto-Germanic *gapōną (descendants Middle English geapen, Dutch gapen, German gaffen), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰеh₂b-. Cognates include Russian зяпа (zjapa). Doublet of gap.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: gapen, gapa