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''gormy'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260817185222-00-⌔

gormy - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

gormy (not comparable)

  • (UK, chiefly Northern England, US, chiefly New England) Awkward, clumsy, klutzy, ungainly.
    • ✤ Synonym: gorming
    • ✤ And not always with finesse — the Lombard clanked and churned, and a man who is like a regular Lombard may be a bit gormy and sometimes apply brute strength when he might do the work easier if he’d stop and think a little.1
    • ✤ Kimball was never one to argue with a comrade’s eyes and ears, not even those of a gormy jeezer like Connolly.2
    • ✤ The Killian boy was carrying a chair, and making difficulties with it; he was what old-time Yankees would have called “a gormy lad.”3
    • ✤ Just the sort of place gormy Eugene would pick to hold a family get-together.4

Adjective

gormy (not comparable)

  • (UK, US, chiefly Southern US) Alternative spelling of gaumy (“sticky, smeared with something sticky; grimy”).
    • ✤ The first thing you have got to do is to wash them gormy ‘ands […]5
    • ✤ When I bought my tamarinds I eat one or two and then discovered that I had left my handkerchief at home, my hands were a little gormy, so I washed them in Frog Pond.6

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɡɔːmi/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈɡɔɹmi/
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)mi

Etymology 1

Either:

  • from gorm (“fool; one who is undiscerning”) +‎ -y (suffix forming adjectives meaning ‘having the quality of’);7 or
  • a variant of gaumy (“awkward”), from gaum (“to stare idly or vacantly; to gape, gaze; to be awkward or stupid; a lout; a gaping, idle fellow”)8 + -y.

Etymology 2

From gorm, gaum (“to smear; grime (noun)”) +‎ -y.9

Printed 2026-08-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1990, John Gould, There Goes Maine!: A Somewhat History, Sort of, of the Pine Tree State, New York, N.Y.: Norton, →ISBN, page 1187: ↩

  2. 1990, Maurice Shadbolt, Monday’s Warriors: […], Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 5: ↩

  3. 2009, Stephen King, chapter 23, in Under the Dome: […], New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN, page 682: ↩

  4. 2010 March, Pat Cunningham, chapter 4, in A London Werewolf in America, [Austin, Tex.]: Siren-BookStrand, →ISBN, page 32: ↩

  5. 1914, Edward[Henry] Peple, The Prince Chap: A Comedy in Three Acts, New York, N.Y.; London: Samuel French, →OCLC, act II, page 50: ↩

  6. 1916 June 22, Abigail Clarke, quoting Edward Everett Hale, “Edward Everett Hale at Harvard College. IV. (1835–39.)”, in The Christian Register, volume 95, number 25, Boston, Mass.: Christian Register Association, →OCLC, page 583, column 1: ↩

  7. “gorm, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. ↩

  8. Joseph Wright, editor (1900), “GAUM, v. and sb.”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume II (D–G), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC, page 578, column 1. ↩

  9. Compare B[ennett] W[ood] Green (1899), Word-book of Virginia Folk-speech, Richmond, Va.: W[illia] m Ellis Jones, […], →OCLC, page 165: “Gormy, adj. Smeary; sticky. Gaumy.” ↩