"G" Word Origins

good morning

Middle English

From Middle English gud mornynge (also as goode morne, gode morne), from Old English *gōdne morgen (“good morning”), an ellipsis for an expression such as "I wish you a good morning", equivalent to good + morning. Compare West Frisian goeie moarn, Dutch goedemorgen, German guten Morgen, Danish god morgen, Swedish god morgon, Icelandic góðan morgunn.

good riddance

English

From riddance, the act of getting rid of something, from the verb rid; the phrase is recorded in English from the sixteenth century.

goodbye

Origin

A contraction of the older phrase "God be with ye," gradually shortened over centuries; "God" shifted to "good" by analogy with phrases like "good morning" and "good night."

Goode

Origin

A variant of the surname Good.

goodhearted

Origin

From Middle English gode herted; equivalent to good + hearted.

goodless

Origin

From Middle English goodles (“poor, without goods or property”), from Old English gōdlēas (“without good, miserable, bad, evil”), equivalent to good + -less.

goodly

Old English

From Old English gōdlīċ, formed from "good" plus the adjective suffix "-ly."

goodman

Middle English

From Middle English godeman, formed from "good" and "man."

goodness

Old English

From Old English gōdnes, built from "good" plus the noun-forming suffix "-ness."

goodnight

Origin

Formed from "good" and "night."

goodwill

Middle English

From Middle English good wille, built from "good" and "will"; the thrift-shop sense comes from the US charity Goodwill Industries.

goodwilly

Origin

From goodwill + -y. Compare Saterland Frisian goudwillich, Dutch goedwillig, German gutwillig. More at goodwill.

Goodwin

Old English

From Old English gōd ("good") and wine ("friend").

goody

Origin

From "good" plus the informal suffix "-y."

gooey

Origin

Formed from "goo" plus the adjective suffix "-ey" (a variant of "-y").

goof

Origin

Likely from dialectal English "goff," meaning a foolish clown, itself of uncertain deeper origin.

goofball

Origin

Formed from "goof" plus "ball."

goofy

Origin

From "goof" plus the adjective suffix "-y."

google

Origin · 100

From the company name Google, itself derived from "googol," a term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Google Translate

English

A compound of the company name Google and translate.

googly

Origin · 1900

Origin uncertain; possibly linked to "googie," an old slang term for an egg, referencing the ball's unexpected bounce. Popularized by cricketer Bernard Bosanquet around 1900.

googol

Origin

Coined by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in 1920, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who had asked Milton to think of a name for the 100th power of ten. The word was first published in the book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

gook

Origin · 1890

First recorded in the 1890s as US military slang applied to Filipinos, later extended during conflicts in Nicaragua, Haiti, Korea, and Vietnam to refer to local populations.

goomer

Origin · 2019

A 4chan meme word from around 2019, blending "game" with "coomer" (another internet slang term), following the same joke pattern used to name a whole family of Wojak-style internet characters.

goon

Origin · 1900

Shortened from "gooney," originally a sailor's word for the albatross and other big, clumsy seabirds. By the early 1900s it had shifted to mean "stupid person," and the "hired thug" sense took off in the late 1930s, partly thanks to the brutish comic-strip character Alice the Goon in Popeye.

goop

Origin · 1930

A 1930s coinage, likely a variant of "goo," alongside similar sound-alike words like "gloop" and "glob."

goose

Latin

From Old English gōs, an ancient word going back through Germanic languages to a Proto-Indo-European root also found in Latin ānser and Sanskrit haṃsá — essentially the same word for "goose" across a huge family of languages.

gooseberry

Origin

"Goose" plus "berry," though the connection to actual geese is unclear — some scholars think the first part was originally a different word, twisted over time by folk etymology into "goose."

goosebumps

English

So called because the bumpy skin resembles that of a plucked goose.

goosefish

Origin

From goose + fish.

Gopal

Hindi

From Hindi गोपाल (gopāl).

Gopala

Sanskrit

From Sanskrit गोपाल (gó-pālá), meaning "cowherd."

gopher

French

Possibly from Cajun French gaufre ("honeycomb, waffle"), the idea being that a gopher's network of burrows looks like the holes in a honeycomb or waffle.

gopi

Sanskrit

From Sanskrit gopī, meaning "cowherd woman," built from gau ("cow") plus a suffix indicating one who tends or protects.

gor

Origin

A minced oath — a softened, less blasphemous-sounding stand-in for "God," similar to "cor" or "gosh."

gora

Hindi

Borrowed from Hindi-Urdu gorā, meaning "fair-skinned" or "white."

Gorbachev

Russian

From Russian горба́ч (gorbáč, "hunchback").

gorbellied

Origin

From gorbelly + -ed.

gorbelly

Origin

UK 16th century. Possibly gore + belly or gormand + belly. Compare Swedish går-bälg.

gorblimey

Origin

Representing a Cockney pronunciation of God blind me!; traditionally, people would curse using contractions rather than breaking the third commandment (Do not use the Lord's name in vain oaths). Compare strewth, zounds, sblood.

gord

Origin

Possibly linked to "gourd," with the wall shape giving the settlement its name.

gordian

Origin

From Gordius + -an or Gordium + -an.

Gordie

Origin

From Gordon + -ie.

Gordon

Latin

The main etymology, associated with Celtic names, is from the Scots surname Gordon, from a place name, but the origin is debated: * If the English or Scots name is from a Brythonic language (such as Old Welsh or Old Breton), then possibly from a Proto-Brythonic compound such as *gor (“spacious”) + *din (“fort”); * If the Scots name is itself from English, then possibly from French Gourdon, derived from Gallo-Roman Latin Gordus, from Gaulish *Gordos; * Otherwise, possibly ultimately from Old English *gor-dūn (“mud hill”) whence a habitational name.

Gordy

Origin

From Gordon + -y.

gore

Old English

From Old English gor ("dung, filth"), which over time narrowed to mean specifically clotted blood; the unrelated "triangular piece" sense comes from a different old word for a wedge- or spear-shaped bit of land or cloth.

gorge

Latin

From Old French gorge, meaning "throat," ultimately from Latin gurges ("whirlpool, gulf"). The "deep ravine" sense developed later, from the image of a river squeezed through a narrow, throat-like passage.

gorged

Origin

From gorge + -ed.